Down in the forest the people saw a long red tongue leaping. With brooms and staves they ran to meet it far from their dwellings, beating it with fury. As they felt the heat of its breath in their faces, they thought of ministers' words in past sermons. Young desires and aspirations long dormant began to throb into being. They prayed for safety. They promised to give up their sins. They determined to be hard on themselves in the performance of daily duties. The Life suspended above them untwisted its loosely gathered in strands, the strands shone with a golden light and entwined again in soft forms. With death-dealing blows they laid the enemy black and broken about Grant's Mills, a mile away, and then went back to their homes telling each other how brave they had been. Pride swelled up their hearts. They boasted that they could take care of themselves. Old habits slipped back upon their aspirations and crushed them again into hidden corners. Life gathered up its loose-woven pattern of dull threads and hung trembling over the town. Worsting the enemy brought the people more closely together. Suddenly they seemed to know each other for the first time. They made changes, entered into bonds, drew lines, and settled into their ways. Life grew quickly with its strands woven tightly together into a weaving that would be hard to unloose. The mill managers made money. They saw to it that their mills buzzed away continually. They visited their homes regularly. Mr. Stillman's farm flourished. His apple trees were bearing. The school children understood that they could always have apples for the asking. The Stillman boys did not go to school. They had a tutor. Their father whipped them soundly when they disobeyed him by going to play in the streets of the town with the other children. Dave Fellows had finally persuaded Dick Shelton to take a Cure. Dick Shelton sober, it was discovered, was a man of culture and knew, into the bargain, all the points of the law. So he was made Justice of the Peace. His wife stopped taking in washing and spent her days trying to keep the children out of the front room where Dick tried his cases. Dave Fellows himself gave up the principalship of the school, finding its meagre return insufficient to meet the needs of an increasing family. Yielding to the persuasion of Henderson, he became contractor for taking out timber at Trout Creek Mill. He counted on his two oldest sons to do men's work during the summer when school was not in session. Fellows moved his family into the very house in which Henderson had lived. Henderson explained that he had to live in town to be near a doctor for his ailing wife and sickly girls. The millmen told Dave Fellows that Henderson was afraid of them because they had threatened him if he kept on overcharging them at the Company store.