With
moist eyes he looked up at the dark house on the hill and pledged
loyalty to the child-woman, knowing that he loved her. But that the love
was the love that mates man and woman for the struggles, the prizes, the
woes, and the contentment of life he was not sure--for he still looked
on Clare Kavanagh as more child than woman.
Marriage seemed yet a long way ahead of him. He rode slowly back to "The
Barracks." His problem seemed to be riding double with him. The problem,
one might say, was in the form of a maid on a pillion. But he did not
look behind to see whether the maid bore the features of Clare Kavanagh
or Madeleine Presson. At that moment he was sure that only Clare's image
rode with him. But in thinking of her he understood his limitations.
For, woodsman and unversed in the ways of women, he had not arrived at
that point in life where he could analyze even a boy's love, much less a
man's passion.
The next morning he left Fort Canibas with big Ben Kyle, to make a tour
of the Thornton camps. It was a trip that took in the cruising of a
township for standing timber on short rations and in the height of the
blackfly season, an experience not conducive to reflections on love and
matrimony.
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