Burned Bridges

This hermit existence he kept up for over a fortnight. He had fought

with Tommy Ashe and he felt diffident about inflicting his company on

Tommy, considering the casus belli. Nor could he bring himself to a

casual dropping in on Sam Carr. He shrank from meeting Sophie, from

hearing the sound of her voice, from feeling the tumult of desire her

nearness always stirred up in him. And there was nowhere else to go, no

one with whom he could talk. He could not hold converse with the Crees.

The Lachlan family relapsed into painful stiffness when he entered their

house. There was no common ground between him and them.

He was really marking time until the next mail should arrive at Fort

Pachugan. The days were growing shorter, the nights edged with sharp

frosts. There came a flurry of snow that lay a day and faded slowly in

the eye of the weakening sun.

Mr. Thompson, watching his daily diminishing food supply with sedulous

consideration, knew that the winter was drawing near, a season merciless

in its rigor. He knew that one of these days the northerly wind would

bring down a storm which would blanket the land with snow that only the

sun of the next May would banish. He was ill-prepared to face such an

iron-jawed season.

If he stayed there it would just about take his quarterly salary to

supply him with plain food and the heavier clothing he needed. But--he

drew a long breath and asked himself one day why he should stay there.

Why should he? He could not forbear a wry grimace when he tried to see

himself carrying out his appointed task faithfully to the end--preaching

vainly to uncomprehending ears month after month, year after year,

stagnating mentally and suffocating spiritually in those silent forests

where God and godly living was not a factor at all; where food,

clothing, and shelter loomed bigger than anything else, because until

these primary needs were satisfied a man could not rise above the status

of a hungry animal.

Yet he shrank from giving up the ministry. He had been bred to it, his

destiny sedulously shaped toward that end by the maiden aunts and the

theological schools. It was, in effect, his trade. He could scarcely

look equably upon a future apart from prayer meetings, from Bible

classes, from carefully thought out and eloquently delivered sermons. He

felt like a renegade when he considered quitting that chosen field. But

he felt also that it was a field in which he had no business now.

He was still in this uncertain frame of mind a few days later when he

borrowed a canoe from Lachlan and set out for the Fort. He had kept

away from Carr's for nearly five weeks. Neither Sophie nor her father

had come to his cabin again. Once or twice he had hailed Carr from a

distance. In the height of his loneliness he had traversed the half-mile

to Tommy Ashe's shack up Lone Moose, only to find it deserted. He

learned later that Lachlan's oldest son and Ashe had gone partners to

run a line of traps away to the north of the village. It occurred to

Thompson that he might do the same--if--well, he would see about that

when he got home from Pachugan.