To Rod these trees had been living things, dumb giants brooding over the earth they shadowed. He had stood among them with a humbled spirit. As a child he had moved in that silence and shade with a strange awe, with a mysterious sense of possession and of being himself possessed. A childish fancy? Perhaps. But it lingered still, recurred often. He could imagine the spirit of the forest putting forth a voiceless protest at all this havoc. He could dismiss these fancies intellectually, but his mind was powerless to put aside emotion. His brain could support action with the stern logic of necessity; it could not always banish the pang from his heart. If it were sentimentality to regret ravished beauty he pleaded guilty. He recalled the protest that burst from a million throats when the cathedral of Rheims crumbled under shell fire. Here was something as beautiful, as inspiring, as much a glorious monument of the centuries as anything of wood and stone wrought by the hands of man. Here was a majesty of form and a beauty of color man might copy but could never surpass. It was being obliterated with considered purpose. Mary encompassed it in a sentence; with a sigh. "It is like seeing a painting you have treasured in your home for a lifetime ripped out of its frame, defaced, torn to bits by some vandal." Summer merged into autumn. September rains rolled up a veil of smoke from scattered forest fires. The coast line emerged clear and sharp from the blur. The maples put on their russet gowns. Equinoctial gales harried the coast briefly and left still days shot through with a waning sun. And whether in sun or storm the wheels on Dent Island turned unremittingly. With sweaty bodies and untiring tools of steel the loggers plied their trade. The booms accumulated and went their way. Money poured in. From the material angle Dent Island was a gold mine. But like mines that have been, the vein was pinching out. On a day in October Rod saw the last of the great booms draw clear in the wake of a steam tug. Before it was out of the Narrows he passed it on the _Haida_, southward bound. Very soon now he could write finis to another chapter in the sequence. Slowly, with a pent eagerness, he was placing his levers to right the inverted pyramid. He knew that before he returned the last tree would fall, would be snatched seaward by the shuddering main line. His crew would gather all their gear on the beach, coil the cables, blow down the donkey boilers. But he would not be there for those obsequies. He had other ghosts to lay.