Rod's most conscious desire, as he moved along a street sodden with a drizzle of cold rain, was to be on the porch at Hawk's Nest, looking at high, aloof mountains deep in winter snow, hiding their heads in wisps of frost-fog, hearing the voice of the rapids lift up its ancient song. He craved rest and quiet, a surcease of incessant street noise, which was to him a faint echo of the sound and fury of the Western Front. He wanted freedom from clash and struggle until he could at least draw his breath and give his heart a chance. He believed he was past a physical crisis, that his heart would strengthen if he could withdraw from crowds and noise, from the swirl of acquisitiveness which bred the mean passions of which he had that day seen some manifestation. He didn't want to be chewed up in the machine which had got beyond Grove's control. He wanted no hand on those levers. Yet he seemed to see obscure forces thrusting upon him tasks he shrank from. On the surface it was simple enough. They couldn't let a smash come. That was clear. To brace up that swaying structure unlimited funds must be created out of the raw material they controlled, that which had been the backbone of the Norquay estate,--those lordly firs which clothed granite ridges and mountain sides, those ancient cedars that masked gorge and hollow and swamp. That would be his job. One well enough to his liking. Even the destruction of a thing Rod loved as he did his native forest could have an element of the constructive, too, if it were not dictated by a necessity born of human folly and greed. Still, that couldn't be helped now. It was a curious feeling of the Norquay Trust Company looming over his personal life as it loomed over the adjacent buildings that depressed Rod most. It seemed rather fantastic to imagine that as threatening his peace and welfare, but the feeling was real. He drifted along the street. People passed him singly, in groups, in pairs, in little droves, hurrying or sauntering, rich and poor, men, women and children, an endlessly flowing stream, of humanity. A sprinkling of khaki showed among them. The majority were the last sweepings of the draft not yet demobilized. Others, he saw at a glance, were returned men. He wondered what they thought of it all now they were back. He was to have that question partially answered before long. Within a block of the _Province_ office where he had last met him Rod encountered Andy Hall. From the hand which grasped Rod's extended one the index and second fingers were missing. He wore a lieutenant's uniform; four wound stripes marked one sleeve. His freckled face had lost some of the old ruddy color, but his eyes flickered as brightly quizzical as in those days when he rigged high-lead spars in the Valdez camp. Rod took this all in at a glance.