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The memory of a woman had ruined Milt Dale's peace, had confounded his philosophy of self-sufficient, lonely happiness in the solitude of the wilds, had forced hinificance of life

When he realized his defeat, that things were not as they see, that he had been blind in his free, sensorial, Indian relation to existence, he fell into an inexplicably strange state, a despondency, a gloom as deep as the silence of his hoer an anireater ht of hireat physical need was action, and now the incentive to action seerew lax He did not want toduties under co as a liberation, but not that he could leave the valley He hated the cold, he greeary of wind and snow; he irass and bright with daisies, the return of birds and squirrels and deer to heir old haunts, would be the ht gradually return to past content early to Paradise Park, brought a fever to Dale's blood--a fire of unutterable longing It was good, perhaps, that this was so, because he seemed driven to work, climb, tramp, and keep ceaselessly on the thened his lax muscles and kept hi He at least need not be asha for that which could never be his--the sweetness of a wo and beauty of children But those dark s into a pit of hell

Dale had not kept track of days and weeks He did not knohen the snow melted off three slopes of Paradise Park All he kneas that an age had dragged over his head and that spring had co hours, and even when he was asleep, there see consciousness that soon he would eed ive up his lonely life of selfish indulgence in lazy affinity with nature, and to go wherever his strong hands ht perforer in this mountain fastness until his ordeal was over--until he couldhimself more of a man than ever before