Burned Bridges

He turned for a look at the yellow windows of Sam Carr's house. It was a

hollow, empty place now, one that he never wanted to see again, like a

room in which a beloved person has died and from which the body has been

carried away. His eyes lingered on the dim bulk of the house, dusky

black and white like a sketch in charcoal.

"Another bridge burned," he said wistfully to himself.

He faced about, crossed the dividing fringe of timber, passing near the

walls of his unfinished church. A wry smile twisted his lips. That would

remain, the uncompleted monument of his good intentions, the substance

of an unrealizable, impractical dream.

Beyond that, as he came out into his own clearing, he saw a light in

his cabin, where he had left no light. When he came to the door another

toboggan lay beside his own. Strange dogs shifted furtively about at his

approach. Warned by these signs he opened the door full of a curiosity

as to who, in the accustomed fashion of the North, had stopped and made

himself at home.

When the man sitting before the stove with his feet on the rusty front

turned his head at Thompson's entrance, he saw, with a mild turn of

surprise, that his visitor was Tommy Ashe.