Page:Harold Titus--Timber.djvu/141

Rh It was an adventure in practical creation for the sake of building, designed for the benefit of no individual, developed for those who were not yet born and for their children of all time. He had been aware of men and women who had struggled unselfishly that others might find living easier, but those people had always worked among men, had stood in range of the public eye, had been of cities, of great, spectacular movements. But here, lost in this country which had been laid waste, a girl, backed only by an aged politician and a group of laborers, carried on her fight, ridiculed, unattended, that homes might be built and cities might grow, that a forest might yield and renew itself for all time!

Taylor felt as small as he had felt before Helen when he first entered her house, a searcher for an easy road to fortune. He had come far; he had done the thing which astonished even his exacting father, but tonight that was as nothing. Sight had been given him and his emulation was roused, not by possible personal triumph but by the thought that perhaps it lay in his power to help carry on this forest, the forest which had become emblematic of all that is most worthy. It was fundamental, it stood next to the supply of food, it was a bulwark against privation and the insurance of national life itself.

He stopped at a juncture of fire lines and looked at the stars. The dipper hung above him and the northern lights, shooting their green spires far toward the zenith, moved behind the treetops, setting the staunch banners of pine in bold silhouette.

"I wanted to help because it meant profit for me," he said in a thin voice. "Profit for me—and to open the way for more profit—But, no longer—not now!"