Page:Harold Titus--Timber.djvu/50

42 one map of Blueberry County with an area set off in a broken blue line. That, he thought, must be the forest, Foraker's Folly. It comprised nearly half of one township. There were charts which he could not decipher; they looked like statistical reports in graphic form, but the legends were in symbols and they yielded him no information.

The flat-topped desk was in poor order, but the accumulated papers bore no dust, evidence that they were much handled. There was an old swivel chair at the desk with the leather worn from its cushions. The remainder of the furniture was largely old-fashioned and of long service. He looked about the walls again scratching his chin in perplexity, and his eyes struck one other object which he had missed, a photograph in an oval frame. It was the face of a young man, and taken years ago. A flowing beard covered the expanse of shirt front, a mop of dark hair was brushed back from the brow. That brow was wide and, the eyes, though the reproduction was dulled by age, possessed the light of great intelligence. It was a good face, a sensitive face, the face of a kindly dreamer, and in it was something of the dignity which had been in the face of Helen Foraker as she talked with him outside the door.

He dropped into an armchair and stretched his feet before the fire.

Rain slashed across the windows steadily and the rising wind moaned in the trees, dropping now to a disconsolate murmur, growing again to a sob, and this cry of weather in pine tops struck a responsive chord of uneasiness in Taylor. Events of the last two days had created a growing doubt in him; the uncongeniality of