And it was happiness, the same strange, soul-aching happiness, that
began to build itself a house close up against the grief in Alan's
heart. It would never be a house quite empty. Never again would he be
alone. He knew at last it was an undying part of him, as it had been a
part of his father, clinging to him in sweet pain, encouraging him,
pressing gently upon him the beginning of a great faith that somewhere
beyond was a place to meet again. In the many days that followed, it
grew in him, but in a way no man or woman could see. It was a secret
about which he built a wall, setting it apart from that stoical
placidity of his nature which some people called indifference. Olaf
could see farther than others, because he had known Alan's father as a
brother. It had always been that way with the elder Holt--straight,
clean, deep-breathing, and with a smile on his lips in times of hurt.
Olaf had seen him face death like that. He had seen him rise up with
awesome courage from the beautiful form that had turned to clay under
his eyes, and fight forth again into a world burned to ashes. Something
of that look which he had seen in the eyes of the father he saw in
Alan's, in these days when they nosed their way up the Alaskan coast
together. Only to himself did Alan speak the name of Mary Standish, just
as his father had kept Elizabeth Holt's name sacred in his own heart.
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