Burned Bridges

The youngster pointed upstream.

"First house you come to," he said. "White house with shingles painted

green. Say, mister, have you just come from the war? My dad was over

there. Do you know my dad, mister?"

The boy stood gazing at him, apparently hopeful of paternal

acquaintance, until he discovered that Thompson did not know his "dad."

Then he darted back to join his fellows at their game.

Thompson walked on. The white house with green shingles loomed up near

at hand, with a clump of flaming maples beside it. Past that stood other

houses in an orderly row facing the river, and back of them were sheds

and barns, and beyond the group of buildings spread a wide area of

cleared land with charred stumps still dotting many an acre.

He had to enter the place he took to be Sam Carr's by the back yard, so

to speak. That is, he came up from the rear, passed alongside the

house--and halted abruptly, with his foot on the first of three steps

rising to a roomy verandah.

He had not meant to eavesdrop, to listen to words not meant for his

hearing. But he had worn the common footgear of yachtsmen, a pair of

rubber-soled canvas shoes, and so had come to the verandah end unseen

and noiselessly. He was arrested there by the sight of two people and

the mention of his own name by one of them.

Sophie was sitting on the rail, looking soberly down on the glacial

gray of Toba River. There was a queer expression on her face, a mixture

of protest and resignation. Tommy Ashe stood beside her. He had

imprisoned one of her hands between his own and he was speaking rapidly,

eagerly, passionately.

Thompson had heard without meaning to hear. And what he heard, just a

detached sentence or two, shot him through with a sudden blaze of anger.

He stepped up on the floor, took quickly the three strides that

separated him from Tommy.

"You are nothing but a common liar," he challenged bluntly. "You know

you are, when you speak of me as being dead. Is that why you scuttled

out of Vancouver and hurried on here, as soon as you saw me back?"

Ashe shrank back a step. His naturally florid face grew purple. Thompson

matched him glance for glance, wondering as the moments ticked off why

Tommy glared and did not strike.

"Your heart has grown as flabby as your principles," he said at last

contemptuously.

For the instant, in anger at a lie, in that fighting mood which puts

other considerations into abeyance when it grips a man, Thompson gave no

heed to Sophie--until he felt her hand on his arm and looked down into

her upturned face, white and troubled, into gray eyes that glowed with

some peculiar fire.