He let his eyes rest thankfully upon those calm,
majestic peaks that walled in the valley. It was even more beautiful
now than he had imagined it could be when the snow blanketed hill and
valley, and the teeth of the frost gnawed everywhere. It was less
aloof; it was as if the wilderness wore a smile and beckoned with
friendly hands.
The current and his paddle swept him down past the settlement, past a
busy, grunting sawmill, past the booming ground where brown logs
floated like droves of sheep in a yard, and he came at last to where
his woodsmen waited with the piled goods on a bank above tidewater.
All the rest of that day, and for many days thereafter, Hollister was
a busy man. There was a pile of goods to be transported up-stream, a
house to be fashioned out of raw material from the forest, the
shingle-bolt chute to be inspected and repaired, the work of cutting
cedar to be got under way, all in due order. He became a voluntary
slave to work, clanking his chains of toil with that peculiar pleasure
which comes to men who strain and sweat toward a desired end.
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