"Thank God we don't have a
cloud-burst more than once in ten years," he remarked to his manager.
"However, that is often enough, considering the high cost of this
one. Those logs were worth eight dollars a thousand feet, board
measure, in the millpond, and I suppose we've lost a hundred thousand
dollars' worth."
He turned from the manager and walked away through the drying yard,
up the main street of Sequoia, and on into the second-growth timber
at the edge of the town. Presently he emerged on the old, decaying
skid-road and continued on through his logged-over lands, across the
little divide and down into the quarter-section of green timber he
had told McTavish not to cut. Once in the Valley of the Giants, he
followed a well-worn foot-path to the little amphitheatre, and where
the sunlight filtered through like a halo and fell on a plain little
white marble monument, he paused and sat down on the now almost
decayed sugar-pine windfall.
"I've come for a little comfort, sweetheart," he murmured to her who
slept beneath the stone. Then he leaned back against a redwood tree,
removed his hat, and closed his eyes, holding his great gray head the
while a little to one side in a listening attitude. Long he sat
there, a great, time-bitten devotee at the shrine of his comfort; and
presently the harried look left his strong, kind face and was
replaced by a little prescient smile--the sort of smile worn by one
who through bitter years has sought something very, very precious and
has at length discovered it.
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