“They’ll be shutting up this joint for the winter,” he told himself many times that night, half hopefully, half regretfully.  “They won’t pay a man to watch forests that are soaking wet.  I guess my job’s done here.”

The next morning a thin white blanket of snow fresh sifted from the clouds lay all over the summit and far down the sides.  Beyond its edges the rain beat steadily upon the matted leaves and branches.  Surely his job was ended with that storm, Jack kept telling himself, while he stared out at his drenched world capped with white.  It was the nearest he had ever been to snow, except once or twice when he had gone frolicking up Mount Wilson with snowballing parties.  He scooped up handfuls of it with a dreary kind of gleefulness—­dreary because he must be gleeful alone—­he made tracks all around just for the novelty of it; he snowballed the rocks.  He would soon go into a different kind of exile, without rules and regulations to hamper his movements; without seventy-five dollars a month salary, too, by the way!  But he would have the freedom of the mountains.  He would be snug and safe in his cave over there, and Marion would climb up to meet him every day or so and bring him magazines and news of the outside world.  And he would fill in the time hunting, and maybe do a little prospecting, as he had vaguely hinted to the man who brought his supplies.  It would not be so bad.

But his job did not end with that storm.  The storm passed after a few days of dreary drizzle in the lower country and howling winds over the crest and a few hours of daytime snowfall that interested Jack hugely because he had never in his life before seen snow actually falling out of the sky.  Then the sun came out and dried the forests, and Supervisor Ross said nothing whatever about closing the lookout station for the winter.

A week of beautiful weather brought other beautiful weeks.  He had another four days’ relief and, warned by the storm, he spent the time in laboriously carrying dead pine wood and spruce bark up to his cave.  It wouldn’t do any harm to have a lot of wood stored away.  It might get pretty cold, some stormy days.  Already the nights were pretty nippy, even to a warm blooded young fellow who had never in his life really suffered from cold.  Some instinct of self-preservation impelled him to phone in for a canvas bed sheet—­a “tarp,” he had heard Hank Brown call it—­and two pairs of the heaviest blankets to be had in Quincy.  You bet a fellow ought to be prepared for the worst when he is planning to winter in a cave!  Especially when he must do his preparing now, or tough it out till spring.

With his mirror he heliographed a signal to Marion, and when she came he said he must have more cigarettes, because he might smoke harder when he was really settled down to roughing it.  What he should have ordered was more bacon and flour, but he did not know that, his mind dwelling upon the luxuries of life rather than the necessities—­he who had never met real necessity face to face.