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Life is a ghastly joke sometimes. It lifts a man to the pinnacle ofhis dreams—and then blows up the pinnacle. Instance this city man,turned logger.

The first time I met Joe Galloway after he married, I envied him. Afriendly, good-natured envy, you understand. He had attained whatlooked to me like genuine success; he had got somewhere, both in amaterial and spiritual way. He had a connection that gave him incomesufficient for his needs, sufficient to maintain a decent standard ofliving, and a substantial interest in the business besides, which wasslowly but surely building up a competence for him. He had his littlecircle of friends, and his home. And he was mated to a woman any manmight be proud of. I could not see anything a man really craves thatwas beyond his reach.

I’ve not had what you’d call a multifarious experience in the way ofmarried folk, but I haven’t gone through the world blind. I have seena lot that lived the proverbial cat-and-dog existence. I’ve seen a lotmore that lived in a state of more or less tolerant indifference. AndI have seen a few that appeared to have a corner on confidence andaffection and genuine understanding, to be really mated, in the widestmeaning of the term. Galloway and his wife seemed to me to be one ofthe finest examples of the latter that I’d ever come across. Joe was areal man, sterling. If one may know a woman by her ordinary manner,then Norma rang as true as he did. And she was a beautiful woman, too;one of those tall, perfectly formed, radiant creatures that a man isproud to be seen walking down the street with.

I’d gone to school with Joe Galloway, but I had seen nothing of himfor many a long moon, until I ran across him quite by accident on atrip East. We had been chummy kids, and we had drifted apart becauseJoe was one of those quiet beggars that knows what he wants and stayseverlastingly on the trail of his purposes—and I’m a rolling stone, afull-fledged brother in the order of the wandering foot. But time anddistance made scant difference. He had a warm recollection of me, andhe insisted that I make his home my headquarters. I did, and spentnearly three weeks with them. They made me feel one withthemselves—and, as I said, I envied them in their happiness. If theywere not happy and contented, there is no such satisfying state ofmind.

I came back to the coast in due time, and while I didn’t write,because I’m not much on correspondence, I did retain some very vividimpressions of Joe and Norma Galloway. I liked to think of them like apair of birds in their nest, while I was knocking about in loggingcamps, with bolt cutters and all the roving, restless lot my way oflife took me among. A man playing a lone hand finds his life full ofbleak spots. He can’t dodge them. And I suppose I thought of those twooften because their lives seemed full of desirable things which hadeluded me. As I saw it, they had attained as near to the ideal as wecan ever reasonably expect to come.

So you can judge of my surprise and know that I was filled with deepwonder and kindred emotions when I came out on the wharf at CoderreLanding just as a tubby coaster backed away, and plumped into JoeGalloway sitting on a war bag, dressed in mackinaws and calked bootslike any logger. I’d never seen him in such garb. I hadn’t seen him atall in four years, and he had a week’s growth of beard—but I knew him.And I knew by the way his eyes widened and then narrowed that he knewme. I spoke to him. For a second I thought he meant to refuserecognition. Then he stuck out his hand.

“Hello, Steve!” he said. “It’s a long time since we met.”

“It is, and I sure never expected to meet you here,” I blurted out.

His face darkened a trifle.

“No,” he answered slowly, “I don’t suppose you did. Still—I’m in alogging country, dressed like a logger. In fact, I am a logger. Do Ilook the part?”

I had to admit that he did, although I had no idea what he was drivingat.

“You’re a friend of mine, aren’t you, Steve?” said he.

“I certainly am,” I replied.

“Well, then,” he continued, in a weary sort of tone, “just take me forgranted. I’m here, going to work in a shingle-bolt camp. I’m awoodsman, and my name is Joe Hall. Just remember that, and don’t askme how it comes to be that way. Will you? I’m here, but I don’t knowhow long I’ll be here, nor where I’ll be headed when I leave. And Idon’t want to be reminded that I was ever anything else, or thatthings were ever any different.”

Of course, I told him I would meet him halfway on that proposition,and we went up to the Coderre Hotel and had a drink, Joe packing hiswar bag over his shoulder, as if he had done it all the days of hislife. We talked more or less perfunctorily, haltingly, dodgingconsciously old days and old themes. I found out that he was bound forthe bolt camp under whose owner I myself held a five-hundred-cordcontract. He seemed a little glad of that, and asked me a lot about mycamp and prospects. Then, after a little, he asked the way to Ryder’s.I showed him, and he started out. I wanted him to wait an hour or sotill I got my business transacted, but he seemed anxious to get on,and I didn’t urge my company upon him.

And I watched him hike off down an old skid road that led to Ryder’scamp at Skeleton Point, wondering. Naturally I wondered. When a mansloughs everything that makes life worth while and turns up at thehardest job on the Pacific coast with a different name, and somethinghard and bitter in his eyes, there’s something radically wrong. Ididn’t ask him what it was. I had no intention of asking, of pryinginto his affairs merely to satisfy my own very human curiosity. In thelanguage of the undertaker, it was his funeral. But I wondered. Isurely did. I didn’t think he’d committed any crime. He didn’t actlike a fugitive. He seemed to me more like a man who had come someterrible cropper and lost all heart for everything. And it must havebeen something sinister and very sweeping, for he wasn’t the sort ofman who lets go easily.

What I saw of him afterward only confirmed those first impressions. Hestuck at the Ryder job, and he used to come down to my camp every fewdays and play crib with me in the evening. There wasn’t much of theold life in him. Not that he was wearied with the work, because he wasa powerful man. Whatever ailed him in his soul, his body hadn’tsuffered. I’ve lived in the open most of my life, doing things thattake endurance and muscle, and he was physically a better man than I.But where he used to sparkle, to be full of the devil, now he wouldsit around quietly, always immersed in his own thoughts, an absentlook stealing over his face if he were left long to himself. And henever spoke of anything east of the Rockies, although the coast Statesseemed like a well-read book to him. So far as speech and actionswent, the first thirty years of his life that I knew directly andindirectly seemed to have been blotted out. He never talked about it,and I dare say he didn’t even want to think about it.

Things ran along like this for a month or so. Joe mentioned at lastthat Ryder was giving the men rotten grub. I put in my oar at that. Ihad a contract under Ryder, but we hadn’t much use for each other—andI was short-handed, too.

“You come down here and cut bolts for me,” I proposed. “I can’t paymore per cord than Ryder does, but I’ll guarantee you better food.”

He considered this a minute.

“All right,” he said indifferently. “It’ll be a change, anyway.”

He landed in my camp at ten the next morning and went to work. I can’tsay that we got any closer for all that we worked in sight of eachother by day and slept under the same roof in the same room at night.Joe remained a silent, preoccupied man. But he had decent food to eat,and I had an efficient shingle-bolt cutter, and, in addition, an ablecrib player to pass the lonely evenings.

I don’t know why, but I felt sorry for him. There was nothing concretein his speech or action to arouse that feeling. It was just anatmosphere, one that I should likely never have sensed if I hadn’tknown him under different circumstances. I couldn’t get it out of myhead that the man had suffered, was still suffering, still beingseared by some inner fire. It isn’t natural for a man of that type tocut loose from everything and everybody. He never got a letter, neverseemed to expect one, never wrote one. He didn’t seem to have any carefor the future, any ambition. He lived from one day to another, justputting in the day. It seemed to satisfy him. But it didn’t satisfyme. It didn’t seem natural.

When he had been with me about six weeks we began to get some badsummer winds on the gulf. Skeleton Point lies just at the entrance toone of the worst tidal passages on the whole North Pacific. Thethirty-odd miles of the gulf’s width is pinched to a pair of half-milenarrows—one against Vancouver Island, one on the mainland side, wheremy camp stood. Through this pent channel the tides come and go withdevilish ferocity. Woe to the small craft caught therein at the fullrun either way. Even the powerful coasters lie up for the slack of thetide, for few have power to buck that tide race, and if they run withit, the danger is little less. Reef and point thrust out from theclosing shores to fling the headlong current this way and that ingreat whirls that will suck down a sixty-foot timber as if it were amatch. The rivers of the Western watershed have their “hell gates”—butthat gateway of the sea which I speak of, leading through narrowreaches to the open water of Queen Charlotte Sound, is the true gateto hell for those who take it otherwise than at slack water.

This snarling trap for mariners rose to the zenith of its fury a fewhundred yards past the lagoon in which I boomed my shingle bolts forRyder. Snarling rips lifted their torn crests offshore from my cabin,when the ebb run met the gulf swell. And just within Skeleton Pointwhere the pent channel widened suddenly, beginning there and extendingits circumference past my lagoon, there swirled and circledceaselessly—save for a brief hour at slack water—a huge back eddy, inwhich sailed around and around all the driftwood and flotsam spewedthrough Hell Gate or brought to its door by ebb and flood. Round inits circle the gray-green water swept, swifter and more swift, untilat full run in or out it raced, and a hollow whirlpool spun in thecenter like a top.

About three weeks after Joe came to work for me, we sat at dinner oneday. Low tide came at one-thirty—the end of a big flood. It had becomemy habit to watch those tides. The tremendous inrushings andoutpourings fascinated me. And I, like other men, had seen strange andfearful things happen there. Once, indeed, the foolhardy skipper of acoastwise boat, with ninety lives under his hand, tried to buckthrough Hell Gate. He had a sixteen-knot-boat contempt for fast water,and a schedule of gulf ports to make. He fought tide and whirl and ripand eddy till he laid Skeleton Point abeam. There his headway was nomore than the race of the stream, and while he quivered and lurched agreat swirl caught and swung him hard on the point, crushing the steelskin of his ship like so much cardboard—and of the ninety, only adozen clawed desperately ashore. I saw that. I saw, too, a thirty-footfishing boat go down by the nose in a whirlpool, go down and down tillthe water closed over her, to be shot afloat, keel up, ten minuteslater, her crew of three drowned like rats in the pilot house. In nospirit of irony was that grim spot called Hell Gate.

As I said, we sat at our food, three of us. I gazed at the waterfoaming by the point, and saw nothing but the racing tide. A secondlater, with my eyes on my plate, Joe startled me with the vehemence ofhis exclamation:

“For God’s sake, look at that!”

I picked the boat up at a glance, and knew that in the moment of myinattention the tide had vomited her out of Hell Gate and past theblack teeth of Skeleton Point. But she was in hard case, helpless inthat terrible sweep, lurching heavily down to her sheer strake. Thusshe would lie canted on her side half a minute on end. Then she wouldstraighten loggily. Again she would spin in the grip of a whirl, amasterless craft, at the whimsical mercy of the sea. I knew that bythe way she yawed and spun, and the silence of her—no chatter ofengine, nor dull popping of exhaust. Her power plant was dead. She wasabout a forty-footer, of the work-boat type. As for her crew—one manstood by the stumpy signal mast, and that was all I saw. He waved ahand to us airily, as if it were all in the day’s work, that sickeninglurch, that uncontrollable spinning in the swirls.

We were all outside on the bank by then, my third man, Joe, andmyself. I squinted seaward and saw very near at hand the tide ripstumbling in a rising gulf swell.

“There’s only one chance for him on God’s green earth,” said I. “If hegoes into those rips without steerageway—good night. If the back eddycatches him, we might heave him a line as she swings past. Come on!”

Past the mouth of the lagoon, a low cliff gave straight down on theeddy’s sweep, and I had often noticed that driftwood making itsinterminable round passed under the cliff. At the end of my cabin hunga coil of half-inch rope. This I took hurriedly, and a link from aboom chain weighing perhaps half a pound for a weight whereby to castthe line. Skirting the lagoon, we three came to the cliff and stood byto watch, I knotting fast the weight. And by the turn of chance or thehand of Destiny, the back eddy caught him in the nick of time.

As he swung out of the seaward stream into the eddy and turning fromthose ominous rips began his swift circle inshore and toward us, Iknew that his chance was small if we failed to reach him on the firstor second turn.

I knew his trouble by the boat’s loggy swing. Without power to giveher steerageway, she had swept through Hell Gate, taking water by thebarrel, escaping destruction against cliff and reef only by somemiracle of the sea. But she rode deep, and listed heavily now tostarboard, now to port, as if all weary of the struggle. Her buoyancywas gone. If she circled in the eddy till she drew to its center thatspinning whirl would suck her down.

“Give me the line!” Joe said, as she shot down toward us.

It was the first word he had spoken, and with it there shone in hiseyes such a gleam of resolve as I had never surprised there—as ifbefore a fellow being’s peril his own embittered soul had cast off itslassitude, had fired with the human instinct to do, to help, to save.

He swung the link on the rope’s end as a sling-shot thrower whirls hismissile, and as the boat—now showing the nameGrosbeak in bold whiteagainst her black bow—came abreast, he shot the line with a tremendousheave of his body. I could not have cast it as far by forty feet, Iknow. But the throw failed. It was scarce in a man’s arm to bridge thedistance. The speed of the current helped to fool him besides. Theline fell short, and to the rear.

“Haul in!” Joe panted. “Haul fast!”

I hauled, and as I hauled he threw off his clothes, his heavy boots,and catching the loose end of the line, knotted it about his breastunder the armpits.

“Ahoy, you!” he yelled. We were running now along the bank to keepabreast. “Swim for it. I’ll meet you with the line.”

It was a desperate chance for both of them. But the man leaningagainst the pilot house threw off shoes and cap, and, running aft,poised lightly on the stern. Then he waved a hand and plungedheadfirst, rose, and faced cliff-ward, borne swiftly along on theeddy, but swimming with slow, vigorous strokes. Galloway—or Hall, ashe wished to be known—sprinted along the cliff and gained some headwayon the swimmer.

“Pay out!” he gritted. “And keep along with the current if you can.”

Then he plunged, thirty feet to the gray-green sweep of the eddy.

It was a great fight, with us two helpless watchers and every chanceagainst that hardy soul from theGrosbeak. With a line on Joe, wecould haul him in. The other had to reach him or drown. And it seemedto me and my bolt cutter that he lost ground, that the eddy carriedhim out for all the power of his stroke. But we told each other thatif he could hold his own Joe would get him.

And he did. With a scant fathom of line left in my hands, and theGrosbeak man fast weakening, they met. I saw Joe grip him, and sawhim relax in that grip. Then we hauled them in and lifted them out ona flat rock, both near gone—for the pull of the rope against the dragof the tide held them under half the time.

The man was conscious, but utterly exhausted, too spent to speak. Helay on his side, breast heaving, hair in clammy strands across hisbrow. A good-looking, clean-built chap of thirty, maybe. All he had onhim was a thin undershirt and a pair of cotton overalls. Their dampcling threw into clean contours the depth of his chest and the ropymuscle of his arms. His face was almost boyish. He lay there panting,blinking up at me. Slowly a wry grin, an odd expression for one whohad been near to death, stole across his face.

He sat up and looked at theGrosbeak, now on her second swing,drawing fatefully near to the vortex.

“I wonder if she’ll make it?” he murmured indifferently.

“It’s about a hundred to one that she won’t,” I answered.

He looked at Joe appraisingly.

“You’re all right,” said he, “to take a long chance like that for arank stranger. I figured it was thumbs down for me. I knew I couldn’tswim ashore in that current, and I knew she’d founder as soon as shestruck those rips.”

“She isn’t going to strike the rips,” my bolt cutter put in. “Look atthe old packet.”

TheGrosbeak lay over on her side and skidded—that is the only way Ican describe her action—skidded right into the whirlpool, and spunthere a dozen turns. Then, curiously, her broad fan-tail stern suckeddown, down till the bluff bow pointed skyward, and so spinning, shedisappeared.

“Either way,” said the man, with a shrug of his shoulders, “it made nodifference.”

“Well, you didn’t,” Joe observed quietly.

“Thanks to you, I didn’t,” he said. “Still—I wasn’t particular.”

I looked at him attentively. He nursed his chin in one hand, staringat the place where theGrosbeak had been, a queer, pursed-up twistto his lips. For a man who had cheated death by scant ten feet ofmanila, he was singularly calm, even indifferent.

“How did it happen?” I asked. “TheGrosbeak’s a stranger throughthese waters.”

“Nanaimo boat,” said he. “Belongs to the G. G. Fish Company. Westarted through Hell Gate in plenty of time to get through on thefirst of the run. But she dropped her propeller. You can guess therest. Except that the skipper—there were just the two of us—gotpanicky when she began to take water in some of the boiling places. Hewas so afraid for his life that he threw it away.”

“How?” I inquired.

“Took the dinghy to row ashore,” the man grinned. “A whirl caughthim.”

He turned his thumb down expressively.

“So here I am,” he continued, “safe and sound, which I didn’t lookfor. Sitting on a rock in a shirt and overalls. Oh, well, it’ll be allthe same a hundred years from now.”

“Less time than that,” I smiled. “In the meantime, come on to thecabin and get some dry clothes on—both of you.”

That is how Ed Broderick happened into my camp at Skeleton Point andgave me a pair of human enigmas to observe. He seemed quiteindifferent as to where he went or what he did. A certain cynicallycheerful humor came over him when he was dried and fed. He had nostrings on him, he declared. The G. G. Company owed him no wages, andhis duty to them ended with reporting the matter. And the upshot ofthat near-tragedy was that Broderick took on a job with me, cuttingcedar into bolts for the hungry shingle saws.

From the very beginning he seemed to exercise a tonic effect on Joe. Idon’t attempt to explain it. I know that it worked out that way. Thetwo became fast friends. Broderick could always banish those silentspells of brooding under which Joe fell. He could make him grin, rousehim out of that deadly absorption in himself. They had in common thefact that both were afflicted with the itching foot, both had a pastof which they never talked. Both were men of education, both were ofthe East. It showed in their inflections, their mannerisms. But theterritory beyond the Rockies lay always ignored in the speech.

Otherwise it seemed that from the Gulf of Georgia to San Diego harbortheir trails had crossed and recrossed unknowingly in the last fouryears. Many the incident they recalled where each had been among thosepresent—a riot in a California hop field, a Frontier Day in Oregon,the stranding of a battleship on the bleak Washington coast. Brothersin unrest, they were, and I, listening to their talk of these things,wondered more and more what turn of fortune’s wheel had set JoeGalloway’s feet in these troubled ways.

Time passed, however, and Joe seemed to brighten up. So far asBroderick went, he was a mighty man with ax and saw, and my bolt pilesrose in corded ricks. Some devil rode him, too, at times, but it rodehim to drink more than was good for him, and to fight like a tigerwhen the liquor was on him. He seldom sat and pondered. He was allaction. In the following two months, he broke out at divers times inthis fashion. And one evening when the three of us were sitting withour pipes—I having let my other man go—Joe took him mildly to task.They had got so chummy that they had planned a prospecting andtrapping trip when my contract was finished:

“What satisfaction is there in going on one of these rampages?” Joeasked. “You only hurt yourself and make enemies of the men you bruiseup in those wild rows.”

“I don’t know that it’s a matter of satisfaction,” Broderick repliedthoughtfully. “Only life seems to me now and then to be nothing but aghastly joke. And I get a crazy impulse to tear everything to pieces.”

“What hityou below the belt?” Joe asked softly.

“Myself, I guess,” Broderick grunted. “Circumstances. Most of us haveour skeletons. When mine rattles I hate the noise so bad I try todrown it out any old way.”

“While I sit still and listen to the clatter of the bones—or I usedto——” Joe threw out his hands impatiently. “Damn it, you’re right, Ed.Lifeis a ghastly joke sometimes. It lifts a man to the pinnacle ofhis dreams—and then blows up the pinnacle. Look at me. Five years agoI could say honestly and fervently that the world was mine—or thatpart thereof that I desired. I had everything a man wants—money,friends, a home, a woman’s love. And I had to give it all up. Itburned me. It hurts yet. I guess I let it hurt me, because it’s alwaysbeen simmering in my mind, and I’ve never been able to talk about itto any one—never wanted to. I hugged it to myself, and went aboutcrying to myself against fate. And still—I’ve often wondered if I’many different from other men; if the same thing comes to other men,and if they take it the same way?”

He looked up. Broderick was staring absently out over the tide racepast Skeleton Point, and Joe met only my mildly questioning gaze. Hesmiled gently.

“I didn’t murder anybody, nor loot a bank, nor commit any felonywhatever to send me on the tramp under an assumed name, Steve,” hesaid to me. “I suppose when I put it in plain words it all sounds likea confession of sheer weakness. It was very simple. You remember howeverything was with me when you were back there? You remember Norma?”

I nodded.

“Four years ago,” he continued, “like lightning out of a clear sky,she told me one day that our life had been an utter failure—that shehad ceased to love me, that she had grown to love another man, andthere was no use trying to go on.

“Man,” he broke out passionately, “it drove me nearly mad, with thecombined madness of grief and jealous rage. I knew I loved her, butuntil I saw myself losing her I never realized how much she meant tome, how my life was bound up in her. I humiliated myself, pleaded andraved and threatened. It seemed to me a madness that had stricken her.I couldn’t see why such a thing had to be. There we were, happy, Ithought, in our companionship. We had our home, our little circle offriends, all the beautiful plans for the future that, we’d madetogether. Nothing seemed to count—nothing but the fact that she lovedsome other man and no longer cared for me—that she was living a lie,and that she was not going to live a lie any longer.

“I didn’t know the other man. I never saw him, never learned his nameeven. I never could visualize him, somehow. But he was there somewherein the background, with her hopes and dreams focused on him. Icouldn’t seem to grasp that phase of it, why she should turn away fromme, when she had loved me once, as I know she did. We’d had ourdifferences. Every man and woman living in the intimacy of marriagehas them. They were trifling things to me, I don’t even know if it wasa mere succession of petty irritations that brought it about. Butthere it was. And while she was sorry, while she regretted it, therewas only the one way out as she saw it. She had to get away from me,to live her own life in her own way. In every bitter discussion that Iforced on her when I was lashing out against the impending break Idreaded so, I could see that she was getting farther and farther awayfrom me, that I had no power to stir in her any emotion exceptresentment, and a little pity.

“So I threw up my hands. I wanted to play fair, as she had playedfair. She wanted to be free, and she was financially dependent on mealone. I cherished a glimmer of hope that she’d come to her senses—asI put it—at the last minute. But she didn’t. And so I sacrificedeverything, turned it all into cash. I didn’t care. Hell, there was awhile I didn’t know what I was doing. I had to get quick action or gomad. She was leaving me, but I didn’t want economic need to drive herinto another man’s arms before she was ready. She wanted to avoid thatherself. Oh, we talked it over time and again, talked soberly andsensibly when I felt like shutting off the breath in her white throatrather than let her go. That was only white-hot jealousy. I couldn’thelp it, but I did control it. When I’d cleaned up everything I hadabout eighteen thousand dollars in cash, and I’d wrecked thefoundation of a fortune. But that seemed nothing beside this otherdread thing that was happening. That gnawed at me day and night. And Ihad to move with caution, to avoid open scandal. I wanted to save herthat. Oh, it was maddening! But the time came at last. I kept fivethousand and gave her the rest. And I hit the trail. I had to. I’vebeen hitting it ever since.

“I never heard from her. I don’t know how she’s faring. I do know thatI can’t get away from the hurt of it. I’ve lost something more than mymate. The heart to buck up and make life give me those things I usedto value is clean gone. I strewed that five thousand dear across thecontinent trying to make myself forget. But I didn’t. You can’t knifea man that way without leaving a sore wound. I peg along from day today. But when I think of doing otherwise, when I think of trying tostart all over again, I find myself asking ‘What’s the use?’ If Icould shut out all those old memories. But I can’t. My mind keepseternally on them, like this back eddy, circling around what was andmight have been and can’t be. I’m a Samson shorn, without the mercy ofperishing when the pillars of my house fell about me.”

Joe stopped and drew the palm of his hand over his forehead. His eyeswere glistening. He stared for a minute out over the uneasy gulf,unseeing, over Broderick’s head. And Broderick’s gaze was fixed on himwith a queer, half-pitying expression.

“Didn’t you ever go back or write to find out if, after all, your wifemight have been the victim of an illusion and only realized it whenyou stepped out of her life?” Broderick asked carelessly.

Joe shook his head.

“No,” said he. “I didn’t give her up without a struggle, and when Ihad to I let go completely. I couldn’t persuade myself to make anothereffort. She knew her own mind, and she held to her determination whenit was making me suffer like the damned. She was sorry. But I didn’twant her pity. I wanted her love.”

“You don’t get my point,” Broderick pursued. “If you ask me, I’d sayyou acted like a fool—any man’s a fool to take a woman’s actions forgranted until she’s committed herself irrevocably. You’ve been eatingyour heart out for four years, and yet you don’t even know but whatshe’s suffering as much as you do—aching for you to come back. For allyou know, the very moment that you were gone and she was free to marrythe other man, it may have dawned on her that she didn’t want to, thatyou filled a place in her life no one else could possibly fill. Idon’t think you’ve got a very comprehensive knowledge of women, Joe,or of human nature in general. You two loved each other. All right.That being so, you passed together through that peculiar ecstasy offeeling that burns like a flame at mating, and, like a flame,sometimes burns out—but always leaves smoldering embers. A man and awoman can only have that emotional experience at its full intensity,once. When you have had it, it’s something that no one and nothing cantake away. Its impressions can’t be ironed out as you can iron thewrinkles out of a piece of cloth. It’s a bond between a man and awoman as long as their hearts beat. Do you suppose that the hundredand one associations of your life together meant nothing to yourwife?”

“They didn’t seem to,” Joe answered sullenly. “She was sick of it all.She thought she saw happiness in another direction.”

“The reason for that you probably know better than I do,” Brodericksaid. “But if I loved a woman I’d takenothing for granted. Not evenif she swore to her feelings on a stack of Bibles. She’d have to proveher words by her deeds before I gave up hope. If she’d been mine once,I’d almost have to know she was finding comfort in another man’s armsbefore I’d be convinced that her feeling for me was dead. There’d bepain in that, but it would take about that to convince me. And by yourown admission you don’t know. You haven’t given her or yourself a fairfighting chance. It’s one thing to act in a whirl of feeling. Thingsoften look altogether different when you’ve dropped back to everydayliving. You took your hurt and ran away and nursed it. You didn’t waitto see what happened after you’d done your part. You don’t know butshe’s somewhere nursing a grief that overtook her the minute you tookyourself beyond sight and hearing of her.”

“No chance,” Joe muttered.

“No chance?” Broderick echoed, with a tinge of scorn in his voice.“The law of probabilities is all on your side. I wish I felt mychances as good. I wish that my chance of happiness had been half asgood as yours. Would I throw up my hands and go wandering up and downthe earth with pain and uncertainty and self-pity like thorns in myflesh? I should say not!”

“You don’t understand,” Joe answered somberly. “There’s some things aman can’t put into words. He can only feel them.”

“But I do understand,” Broderick insisted. “I’ve been through themill. A man gets on the grid, and he can only squirm. I know what itis to ache with a pain that isn’t physical. But with me it came ofactual unescapable knowledge—the pain of sheer unchangeablehopelessness.You took a lot of things for granted. Seems to me youran away under fire.”

Joe threw out his hands impotently. “What the devil else could I do?”he demanded harshly. “She had to be free—free to marry the man shewanted. I could have stood on my rights as a husband. What was theuse? She’d only have hated me. It wasn’t any light love affair withher. She wasn’t that kind. She wanted happiness—she could only see itin a certain direction—but she wanted it to come decently andhonorably. There was no ground for divorce. I had to devise a ground.So I deserted her. As I saw it, there wasn’t anything else for me todo.”

Broderick’s eyes gleamed.

“You’re a man,” he said quietly, “a real man. But a fool for all that,I think. Didn’t it ever occur to you that she might really miss youafter those years of intimate living? That your clean sweep ofeverything might have made a gap in her life that nothing but youyourself could fill in again? A woman’s human—gifted or cursed, as youlike to put it—with all the human vagaries of impulse. Sometimes ittakes a grand upheaval to make us see things as they really are—toknow ourselves.”

Joe got to his feet and threw his arms wide to the sunset, and letthem fall by his side.

“Why should I try to fool myself?” he said. “All I want is to forget.That’s all.”

He went into the cabin. We heard the creak of his bunk as he threwhimself down. Broderick clasped both hands over his knees and staredat the ground. His brows knitted, as over some problem he strove tosolve. After a minute, he looked at me.

“Joe unburdened his soul very completely,” he said. “Does his rightname happen to be Galloway?”

“Why, yes, that’s his name,” said I—surprised into admission. “How didyou know?”

“I didn’t know,” Broderick muttered. “But I had a hunch.”

He sat for a little while, picking up pebbles and casting them overthe bank with a flip of his hand. Then he, too, rose and went into thecabin.

The door stood open beside me, and the small window above my head.Every word they uttered within came distinctly to me. I heardBroderick repeat almost word for word, impatiently, challengingly, thelast questioning sentences he had put to Joe.

“Why bother me with your theories,” Galloway answered roughly. “Whatis it to you? What do you know about these things I’ve been foolenough to talk about?”

“I know all there is to know about it,” Broderick answered slowly. “Agreat deal more than you yourself know. I’m the other man.”

I drew beyond hearing at that. It lay between the two of them, amatter intimate and grievous, not for casual ears. So I moved to thecorner, where only came the indistinguishable drone of their voices,wondering to myself if the devil that rises in men where a woman isconcerned would presently set them at each other’s throats. They werestrong, passionate men. I was a little afraid for them, for I likedthem both.

An hour passed. Dusk merged into darkness. Still they talked, theirvoices never rising above that repressed murmur. Then the lamp flashedits yellow square through the doorway, and both came out. Joe turnedaway and walked along the cliff slowly, a dim outline in the night.Broderick stood looking about. Presently he called:

“Oh, Steve!”

“Here!” I answered.

He came and sat down on the ground beside me. The match he laid to hispipe bowl showed his face hard-drawn. His eyes smoldered.

“Did you hear?” he asked.

“I heard you declare yourself,” said I frankly. “Then I moved out ofearshot.”

He sat silent for a time.

“Joe doesn’t actively blame me,” he said at last. “But he resentseverything. He’s lived within himself so long, bottling up his grief,that he’s morbid. I can’t do anything with him, can’t make him seesense. The thing he ought to do for their own two sakes—write to Normaor go to her and make up—he won’t do. You knew her, it seems. Youheard his side of it—absolutely true, so far as it goes. But there’stwo sides to everything.”

“Fire away,” said I—for I knew by his tone that he was smolderinginside, that he wanted the relief of talk that would neither bemisunderstood nor resented.

“Joe made the same mistake that other men have made and regretted,”Broderick went on, “as near as I can gather. He let his ambition andhis business overshadow his wife and his home. I suppose he felt thateverything was fixed and secure and final. And that’s a bad thing withany woman young and proud and passionate as Norma Galloway. It wasvery simple. Joe was getting wholly immersed in his business. He wastraveling a lot for his firm. And I happened to wander into her lifeat a time when she was in a peculiarly receptive state of mind. Thatsounds commonplace—but I’m not good at analysis. I loved her in my ownheadlong way. Nothing else mattered to me but her. I knew where Istood. She thought she did. There wasn’t anything sordid or underhandabout it. We talked it over from every angle, God knows. She wasn’thappy with him. All her feeling for him seemed dead. She knew I lovedher, and she believed she loved me, and that for us two life togethermeant happiness if we could take it up honorably together. So she toldhim, and you know how he played his part.”

“I’ve known Joe since we were kids,” I said. “He’s a white man.”

“He is,” Broderick agreed. “Every inch of him. But, as I said,something of a fool where a woman’s heart is concerned. He took toomuch for granted—let go too easily. He didn’t have anything but herword for it—and a woman’s word is nothing in matters of this sort. Onecan talk and talk and never get anywhere. It’s deeds that count. Hedidn’t give her a chance. He never saw me, never even knew my name. Iwasn’t looming a big figure before him to drive him insane withimpotent jealousy. But when the big upheaval came, he effaced himselfas absolutely as if he had been buried. He made no effort to learn howthings went.

“And then”—Broderick bowed his head for a second—“then, after he wasgone, and there was nothing to do but wait patiently a little while,get a divorce quietly, and marry me, she woke up. It wasn’t me shewanted. It was Joe. She’d loved him in the beginning. When he’d madethe complete renunciation, stepped out of her life for good and all,she found something lacking, a place that nobody else could fill, thatshe wanted him back, that her heart ached to have him back. Oh, youcan’t ever tell anything about a woman. And yet, I suppose it was onlynatural. He’d become a part of her life. I was only an incident. Isuppose so many things used to rise up and make her long for him.She’d lived with him. The nearest she’d ever been to me was to kiss meshyly once or twice.

“Anyway, once he was gone, it was all different. The money he gave hershe banked and left alone. She would no more have lived on it than shewould have let me support her. She used to say that she was beingpunished for breaking a good man’s heart for a passing whim.”

Broderick lifted his head and laughed harshly.

“Meaning Joe, of course,” he said. “It didn’t seem to occur to herthat I was very deeply involved. The most she would let me do for herwas to help her get a position. I happened to have a cousin in themillinery business in Utica, and Norma got work there—enough to livedecently on. And when I’d tried every means to move her, and failed, Ihad to get out and get action or go crazy. So I went on the tramp,like Joe, a good deal. I can live anywhere, under any conditions. Andthere you are.

“But,” he broke out, after a little, “I didn’t let go like he did. Iwrote to her. Time and again, at first. Every few months since. That’show I know where she is, and how she still feels. She’s there yet,pegging away, waiting. She’s his wife, legally, in spirit, every way.She’s been true as steel. And her one solace is that some time he’llcome back, or she’ll find out where he is and win him back and make upsomehow for these ghastly years.

“And can you see the tragedy in it?” Broderick went on. “He refuses toact. He won’t do anything. He says he has suffered till he’s numb. AndI can’t make him see that she has suffered, too, is suffering yet, ashe is. It’s pride. If I were in his place, I’d have no pride. I’dcrawl on my hands and knees in the dust back to her if I could createfor myself the longing she has for him. It isn’t worth while to beproud and aloof and miserable when all you have to do is reach outyour hands for happiness. Two of us can get our feet out of thisdeadly coil. Why should all three be lonely and miserable? I know hedoesn’t want to have it that way. It’s just a stubborn streak. He’smorbid. What has been can’t be helped. But the future, that’s adifferent matter.”

“You might write and tell her where he is and how he feels about it,”I suggested. “That would be a fine thing to do.”

Broderick laughed hard and mirthlessly.

“I suppose I could,” he said. “But it would be better if he made thefirst move. However, I knowshe wouldn’t hesitate. Yes, I dare sayit would be eminently proper for me to be the god in the machine—tobring them together with a Heaven-bless-you-my-children—and then fadeaway. Well, I don’t know. I’ll have to think about that.”

He got up abruptly and walked into the cabin. When I followed, he wasin his bunk, the blankets drawn over his head. A few minutes later,Joe came in. What sort of truce they had declared I never knew.Between them as men there was genuine liking. If that matter of awoman had stirred up feeling of any intensity between them, they weremen enough to repress it.

So, for a matter of two weeks, the days marched past, filled with themonotonous labor of cutting and piling cedar bolts. The fall days wereon us, with their long, gray evenings. My bolt contract was aboutdone, and we took it easy, working short hours. The first man inkindled the kitchen fire, and also built another on the ground beforethe cabin door. When we had eaten we would sit outside under theprojecting eave smoking our pipes before the cheerful crackling logs.It was pretty much as it had been before that night of soulunburdenings—except that we talked a bit less freely, there was moreof constraint upon us.

Then one evening, in the first gray of dusk, when we had knocked offearly and were sitting outside by the fire, watching the same tubbycoaster that had brought Galloway to Coderre go lurching past SkeletonPoint into the maw of Hell Gate, I heard the clatter of a buggy on thelittle-used road that ran between the landing and my camp. In a minuteit gained the clearing. I saw the figure of a woman beside the driver.A few seconds later she was clambering out and walking toward us witha firm step. Norma Galloway, just as I recalled her, fair strands ofhair wind-blown across her face, deep blue eyes shining, lips a trifleparted, her gaze fixed on Joe.

I turned to look for Broderick. He was all but behind the cabin, andhe beckoned me imperatively. I followed. It didn’t matter, anyway.There was only one man looming before her, and he stood rooted to theground as if he doubted the evidence of his visual sense.

Broderick strode along the cliff. When I caught up with him he wasseated on a log, holding his face in his hands.

“You did write, And she came,” I said—for lack of something lessobvious.

“Shut up!” he gritted. “I’m not in a talking mood.”

I don’t know how long we sat there. Broderick did not move, nor lifthis head. It grew dark. I looked toward the cabin now and then, andonce saw the fire break into a yellow gleam when some one stirred it.

“I guess all’s quiet along the Potomac.” Broderick lifted his face atlast. “I’ve done my bit. Let’s go back.”

We walked slowly. Nearing the cabin and the soft glow before it, astick broke in a shower of sparks and sent up a bright flame thatthrew into bold relief two figures—Joe on a block seat, his wifecurled on the earth beside smiled up at him, and then at me. Therewasn’t any further explanation needed.

“Ed has gone,” I said—and added a white lie to smooth things. “He toldme to wish you luck.”

It seemed to me a shade of relief crossed both their faces. Loveisselfish. But I couldn’t blame them.

I gave them the cabin that night and made my bed beside the fire. ButI didn’t sleep. No. Broderick loomed too big in my mind.

The back eddy had brought him unwitting to the spot, to straighten agrievous tangle in two lives, to bring peace to unquiet souls. And itmight be that the eddy took him away. I don’t know. I’ve oftenwondered. I know I never saw him, never heard of him again.