He turned for a look at the yellow windows of Sam Carr's house. It was a
hollow, empty place now, one that he never wanted to see again, like a
room in which a beloved person has died and from which the body has been
carried away. His eyes lingered on the dim bulk of the house, dusky
black and white like a sketch in charcoal.
"Another bridge burned," he said wistfully to himself.
He faced about, crossed the dividing fringe of timber, passing near the
walls of his unfinished church. A wry smile twisted his lips. That would
remain, the uncompleted monument of his good intentions, the substance
of an unrealizable, impractical dream.
Beyond that, as he came out into his own clearing, he saw a light in
his cabin, where he had left no light. When he came to the door another
toboggan lay beside his own. Strange dogs shifted furtively about at his
approach. Warned by these signs he opened the door full of a curiosity
as to who, in the accustomed fashion of the North, had stopped and made
himself at home.
When the man sitting before the stove with his feet on the rusty front
turned his head at Thompson's entrance, he saw, with a mild turn of
surprise, that his visitor was Tommy Ashe.