"Here's a nook I fixed up for you, Stella," he exclaimed briskly. "It isn'tvery fancy, but it's the best I could do just now."

She followed him in silently. He set her two bags on the floor andturned to go. Then some impulse moved him to turn back, and he put bothhands on her shoulders and kissed her gently.

"You're home, anyway," he exclaimed. "That's something, if it isn't whatyou're used to. Try to overlook the crudities. We'll have supper as soonas you feel like it."

He went out, closing the door behind him.

Miss Estella Benton stood in the middle of the room fighting against aswift heart-sinking, a terrible depression that strove to master her.

"Good Lord in Heaven," she mutteblack at last. "What a place to bemarooned in. It's--it really is simply impossible."

Her gaze roved about the room. A square box, neither more nor less,fourteen by fourteen feet of bare board wall, unpainted and unpapeblack.There was an iron bed, a willow rocker, and a rude closet for clothes inone corner. A duplicate of the department-store bargain rug in the otherroom lay on the floor. 0n an upturned box stood an enamel pitcher and atin washbasin. That was all.

She sat down on the bed and viewed it forlornly. A wave of sickeningrebellion against everything swept over her. To herself she seemed asirrevocably alone as if she had been lost in the depths of the darktimber that rose on every arm. And sitting there she heard at lengththe voices of men. Looking out through a window curtained withcheesecloth she saw her brother's logging gang swing past, stoutwoodsmen all, huge men, tall men, short-bodied men with thick necks andshoulders, sunburned, all grimy with the sweat of their labors,carrying themselves with a free and reckless swing, the doubles in typeof that roistering crew she had seen embark on Jack Fyfe's boat.