"How?" eagerly.

"I met him in the pine woods of the South. I was down there to recover

from a cataclysm which had changed--my life. This man had a little

shack next to mine. Neither of us had much money. We lived literally

in the open. We cooked over fires in front of our doors. We hunted

and fished. Now and then we went to town for our supplies, but most of

our things we got from the schooner-men who drove down from the hills.

My neighbor was married. He had a wife and three children. But he had

come alone. And he told me grimly that he should never go back until

he went back a man."

"Did he go back?"

"Yes. He conquered. He looked upon his weakness not merely as a moral

disease, but as a physical one. And it was to be cured like any other

disease by removing the cause. The first step was to get away from old

associations. He couldn't resist temptation, so he had come where he

was not tempted. His occupation in the city had been mental, here it

was largely physical. He chopped wood, he tramped the forest, he

whipped the streams. And gradually he built up a self which was

capable of resistance. When he went back he was a different man, made

over by his different life. And he has cast out his--devil."

The boy was visibly impressed.

"His way might not be your way," Roger concluded, "but the fact that he

fought a winning battle should give you hope."

The next day they went back. Mary met them as if nothing had happened.

The basket of fish which they had brought to be cooked by Susan Jenks

furnished an unembarrassing topic of conversation. Then Barry went to

his room, and Mary was alone with Roger.

She had had a letter from him, and a message by telephone; thus her

anxiety had been stilled. And she was very grateful--so grateful that

her voice trembled as she held out her hands to him.

"How shall I ever thank you?" she said.

He took her hands in his, and stood looking down at her.

He did not speak at once, yet in those fleeting moments Mary had a

strange sense of a question asked and answered. It was as if he were

calling upon her for something she was not ready to give--as if he were

drawing from her some subconscious admission, swaying her by a force

that was compelling, to reveal herself to him.




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