From the seclusion of the timber behind this point of rocks he set
himself to watch through his glasses the house down the river. The
second day of keeping this vigil he saw the man leave the place, gun
in hand, cross on the river ice and vanish in the heavy timber of that
wide bottom land. Hollister did not know what business took him on
these recurrent absences; hunting, he guessed, but he had noted that
the man seldom returned before late in the afternoon, and sometimes
not till dusk.
He waited impatiently for an hour. Then he went down to the frozen
river. Twenty minutes' rapid striding brought him to the door of the
house.
The place was roughly built of split cedar. A door and a window faced
the river. The window was uncurtained, a bald square of glass. The sun
had grown to some little strength. The air that morning had softened
to a balminess like spring. Hollister had approached unseen over snow
softened by this warmth until it lost its frosty crispness underfoot.
Now, through the uncurtained window, his gaze marked a section of the
interior, and what he saw stayed the hand he lifted to rap on the
door.
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