And he looked a long
time before he turned downhill.
A week passed. Once more the blustery god of storms asserted his
dominion, leaving the land, when he passed, a foot deeper in snow. If
he had elected to stay there from choice, Hollister now kept close to
his cabin from necessity, for passage with his goods to the steamer
landing would have been a journey of more hardships than he cared to
undertake. The river was a sheet of ice except over the shallow
rapids. Cold winds whistled up and down the Toba. Once or twice on
clear days he climbed laboriously to a great height and felt the cold
pressure of the northwest wind as he stood in the open; and through
his field glasses he could see the Inlet and the highroads of the sea
past the Inlet's mouth all torn by surging waves that reared and broke
in flashing crests of foam. So he sat in the cabin and read Doris
Cleveland's books one after another--verse, philosophy, fiction--and
when physical inaction troubled him he cut and split and piled
firewood far beyond his immediate need. He could not sit passive too
long.
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