But somehow to Bat the whole thing was unreal. It meant nothing. It
could mean nothing. He felt like a man walking towards a precipice he
could not avoid. He felt disaster, added disaster, was in the air and
was closing in upon them. He knew in his heart that this long, weary
inspection, all the stuff they talked, all the future plans they were
making for the mill was the merest excuse. And he wondered when Standing
would abandon it and reveal his actual purpose. The man, he knew, was
consumed by a voiceless grief. His soul was tortured beyond endurance.
And there was that "yellow streak," which Bat so feared. When, when
would it reveal itself? How?

Now, at last, as they rested on the ledge overlooking the mill and the
waters of the cove, he felt the moment of its revelation had arrived. He
was propped against the stump of a storm-thrown tamarack. Standing was
stretched prone upon the fallen trunk itself. Neither had spoken for
some minutes. But the trend of thought was apparent in each. Bat's
deep-set, troubled eyes were regarding the life and movement going on
down at the mill, whose future was the greatest concern of his life.
Standing, too, was gazing out over the waters. But his darkly brooding
eyes were on the splendid house he had set up on the opposite hillside.
It was the home about which his every earthly hope had centred. And even
now, in his despair, it remained a magnet for his hopeless gaze.

Winter was already in the bite of the air and in the absence of the
legions of flies and mosquitoes as well as in the chilly grey of the
lapping waters below them. It was doubtless, too, searching the heart of
these men whose faces gave no indication of the sunlight of summer
shining within.

"Bat!"