There was nothing left of the buildings except a pile of stone which
had been the fireplace in the log house, and a little to one side the
rusty, red skeleton of the mess-house stove. They looked about
curiously for a few minutes and went back to the valley.
At the house Hollister paid them off. They went their way down to the
steamer landing, eager for town after a long stretch in the woods. The
fire was only an exciting incident to them. There were other camps,
other jobs.
It was not even an exciting incident to Hollister. Except for a little
sadness at sight of that desolation where there had been so much
beauty, he had neither been uplifted nor cast down. He had been
unmoved by the spectacular phases of the fire and he was still
indifferent, even to the material loss it had inflicted on him. He was
not ruined. He had the means to acquire more timber if it should be
necessary. But even if he had been ruined, it is doubtful if that fact
would have weighed heavily upon him. He was too keenly aware of a
matter more vital to him than timber or money,--a matter in which
neither his money nor his timber counted one way or the other, and in
which the human equation was everything.
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