MacRae doubted this. He had had experience of both. At the moment he
could see nothing in either but vast accumulations of futile anguish
both of the body and the soul.




CHAPTER XVIII

A Renewal of Hostilities


The pussy willows had put out their fuzzy catkins and shed them for
delicate foliage when MacRae came back to Squitty Cove. The alder, the
maple and the wild cherry, all the spring-budding trees and shrubs, were
making thicket and foreshore dainty green and full of pleasant smells.
Jack wakened the first morning at daybreak to the muted orchestration of
mating birds, the song of a thousand sweet-voiced, unseen warblers. The
days were growing warm, full of sunshine. Distant mountain ranges stood
white-capped and purple against sapphire skies. The air was full of the
ancient magic of spring.

Yet MacRae himself, in spite of these pleasant sights and sounds and
smells, in spite of his books and his own rooftree, found the Cove
haunted by the twin ghosts he dreaded most, discontent and loneliness.
He was more isolated than he had ever been in his life. There was no one
in the Cove save an old, unkempt Swede, Doug Sproul, who slept eighteen
hours a day in his cabin while he waited for the salmon to run again, a
withered Portuguese who sat in the sun and muttered while he mended