Perhaps
that would come later. For the present it seemed as if she had reached
the end of something, as if she were very tired, and had gratefully
come to a welcome resting place. She turned her gaze out the open door
where the forest fell away in vast undulations to a range of
snow-capped mountains purple in the autumn haze, and a verse that Bill
had once quoted came back to her:
"Oh, to feel the Wind grow strong
Where the Trail leaps down.
I could never learn the way
And wisdom of the Town."
She blinked. The town--it seemed to have grown remote, a fantasy in
which she had played a puppet part. But she was home again. If only
the gladness of it endured strong enough to carry her through whatever
black days might come to her there alone.
She would gladly have cooked her supper in the kitchen fireplace, and
laid down to sleep under her own roof. It seemed the natural thing to
do. But she had not expected to find the cabin livably arranged, and
she had promised the Lauers to spend the night with them. So presently
she closed the door and walked away through the woods.
CHAPTER XXXIV
AFTER MANY DAYS
September and October trooped past, and as they marched the willow
thickets and poplar groves grew yellow and brown, and carpeted the
floor of the woods with fallen leaves.
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