"But you showed us the jack every time before you throwed them!" puzzled Johnny Simms.

"Sleight of hand," explained Newmark. "The simplest kind of palming."

"Well, Charlie," said big Tim, "looks to me as if you had just about as much chance as a snowball in hell."

"Where'd you get onto doing all that, Newmark?" inquired North. "You ain't a tin horn yourself?"

Newmark laughed briefly. "Not I," said he. "I learned a lot of those tricks from a travelling magician in college."

During this demonstration Orde had sat well in the background, his chin propped on his hand, watching intently all that was going on. After the comment and exclamations following the exposure of the method had subsided, he spoke.

"Boys," said he, "how game are you to get Charlie's money back—and then some?"

"Try us," returned big Tim.

"This game's at McNeill's, and McNeill's is a tough hole," warned Orde. "Maybe everything will go peaceful, and maybe not. And you boys that go with me have got to keep sober. There isn't going to be any row unless I say so, and I'm not taking any contract to handle a lot of drunken river-hogs as well as go against a game."

"All right," agreed Nolan, "I'm with you."

The thirty or so men of the rear crew then in camp signified their intention to stay by the procession.

"You can't make those sharps disgorge," counselled Newmark. "At the first look of trouble they will light out. They have it all fixed. Force won't do you much good—and may get some of you shot."

"I'm not going to use force," denied Orde. "I'm just going to play their game. But I bet I can make it go. Only I sort of want the moral support of the boys."

"I tell you, you CAN'T win!" cried Newmark disgustedly. "It's a brace game pure and simple."

"I don't know about it's being pure," replied Orde drolly, "but it's simple enough, if you know how to make the wheels go 'round. How is it, boys—will you back my play?"

And such was their confidence that, in face of Newmark's demonstration, they said they would.



VII

After the men had been paid off, perhaps a dozen of them hung around the yards awaiting evening and the rendezvous named by Orde. The rest drifted away full of good intentions, but did not show up again. Orde himself was busy up to the last moment, but finally stamped out of the office just as the boarding-house bell rang for supper. He surveyed what remained of his old crew and grinned.

"Well, boys, ready for trouble?" he greeted them. "Come on."

They set out up the long reach of Water Street, their steel caulks biting deep into the pitted board-walks.

For nearly a mile the street was flanked solely by lumber-yards, small mills, and factories. Then came a strip of unimproved land, followed immediately by the wooden, ramshackle structures of Hell's Half-Mile.

In the old days every town of any size had its Hell's Half-Mile, or the equivalent. Saginaw boasted of its Catacombs; Muskegon, Alpena, Port Huron, Ludington, had their "Pens," "White Rows," "River Streets," "Kilyubbin," and so forth. They supported row upon row of saloons, alike stuffy and squalid; gambling hells of all sorts; refreshment "parlours," where drinks were served by dozens of "pretty waiter-girls," and huge dance-halls.

The proprietors of these places were a bold and unscrupulous lot. In their everyday business they had to deal with the most dangerous rough-and-tumble fighters this country has ever known; with men bubbling over with the joy of life, ready for quarrel if quarrel also spelled fun, drinking deep, and heavy-handed and fearless in their cups. But each of these rivermen had two or three hundred dollars to "blow" as soon as possible. The pickings were good. Men got rich very quickly at this business. And there existed this great advantage in favour of the dive-keeper: nobody cared what happened to a riverman. You could pound him over the head with a lead pipe, or drug his drink, or choke him to insensibility, or rob him and throw him out into the street, or even drop him tidily through a trap-door into the river flowing conveniently beneath. Nobody bothered—unless, of course, the affair was so bungled as to become public. The police knew enough to stay away when the drive hit town. They would have been annihilated if they had not. The only fly in the divekeeper's ointment was that the riverman would fight back.

And fight back he did, until from one end of his street to the other he had left the battered evidences of his skill as a warrior. His constant heavy lifting made him as hard as nails and as strong as a horse; the continual demand on his agility in riding the logs kept him active and prevented him from becoming muscle-bound; in his wild heart was not the least trace of fear of anything that walked, crawled, or flew. And he was as tireless as machinery, and apparently as indifferent to punishment as a man cast in iron.

Add to this a happy and complete disregard of consequences—to himself or others—of anything he did, and, in his own words, he was a "hard man to nick."

As yet the season was too early for much joy along Hell's Half-Mile. Orde's little crew, and the forty or fifty men of the drive that had preceded him, constituted the rank and file at that moment in town. A little later, when all the drives on the river should be in, and those of its tributaries, and the men still lingering at the woods camps, at least five hundred woods-weary men would be turned loose. Then Hell's Half-Mile would awaken in earnest from its hibernation. The lights would blaze from day to day. From its opened windows would blare the music, the cries of men and women, the shuffle of feet, the noise of fighting, the shrieks of wild laughter, curses deep and frank and unashamed, songs broken and interrupted. Crews of men, arms locked, would surge up and down the narrow sidewalks, their little felt hats cocked one side, their heads back, their fearless eyes challenging the devil and all his works—and getting the challenge accepted. Girls would flit across the lit windows like shadows before flames, or stand in the doorways hailing the men jovially by name. And every few moments, above the roar of this wild inferno, would sound the sudden crash and the dull blows of combat. Only, never was heard the bark of the pistol. The fighting was fierce, and it included kicking with the sharp steel boot-caulks, biting and gouging; but it barred knives and firearms. And when Hell's Half-Mile was thus in full eruption, the citizens of Redding stayed away from Water Street after dark. "Drive's in," said they, and had business elsewhere. And the next group of rivermen, hurrying toward the fun, broke into an eager dog-trot. "Taking the old town apart to-night," they told each other. "Let's get in the game."

To-night, however, the street was comparatively quiet. The saloons were of modified illumination. In many of them men stood drinking, but in a sociable rather than a hilarious mood. Old friends of the two drives were getting together for a friendly glass. The barkeepers were listlessly wiping the bars. The "pretty waiter-girls" gossiped with each other and yawned behind their hands. From several doorways Orde's little compact group was accosted by the burly saloonkeepers.

"Hullo, boys!" said they invariably, "glad to see you back. Come in and have a drink on me."

Well these men knew that one free drink would mean a dozen paid for. But the rivermen merely shook their heads.

"Huh!" sneered one of the girls. "Them's no river-jacks! Them's just off the hay trail, I bet!"

But even this time-honoured and generally effective taunt was ignored.

In the middle of the third block Orde wheeled sharp to the left down a dark and dangerous-looking alley. Another turn to the right brought him into a very narrow street. Facing this street stood a three-story wooden structure, into which led a high-arched entrance up a broad half-flight of wooden steps. This was McNeill's.

As Orde and his men turned into the narrow street, a figure detached itself from the shadow and approached. Orde uttered an exclamation.

"You here, Newmark?" he cried.

"Yes," replied that young man. "I want to see this through."

"With those clothes?" marvelled Orde. "It's a wonder some of these thugs haven't held you up long ago! I'll get Johnny here to go back with you to the main street."

"No," argued Newmark, "I want to go in with you."

"It's dangerous," explained Orde. "You're likely to get slugged."

"I can stand it if you can," returned Newmark.

"I doubt it," said Orde grimly. "However, it's your funeral. Come on, if you want to."

McNeill's lower story was given over entirely to drinking. A bar ran down all one side of the room. Dozens of little tables occupied the floor. "Pretty waiter-girls" were prepared to serve drinks at these latter—and to share in them, at a commission. The second floor was a theatre, and the third a dance-hall. Beneath the building were still viler depths. From this basement the riverman and the shanty boy generally graduated penniless, and perhaps unconscious, to the street. Now, your lumber-jack did not customarily arrive at this stage without more or less lively doings en route; therefore McNeill's maintained a force of fighters. They were burly, sodden men, in striking contrast to the clean-cut, clear-eyed rivermen, but strong in their experience and their discipline. To be sure, they might not last quite as long as their antagonists could—a whisky training is not conducive to long wind—but they always lasted plenty long enough. Sand-bags and brass knuckles helped some, ruthless singleness of purpose counted, and team work finished the job. At times the storm rose high, but up to now McNeill had always ridden it.

Orde and his men entered the lower hall, as though sauntering in without definite aim. Perhaps a score of men were in the room. Two tables of cards were under way—with a great deal of noisy card-slapping that proclaimed the game merely friendly. Eight or ten other men wandered about idly, chaffing loudly with the girls, pausing to overlook the card games, glancing with purposeless curiosity at the professional gamblers sitting quietly behind their various lay-outs. It was a dull evening.

Orde wandered about with the rest, a wide, good-natured smile on his face.

"Start your little ball to rolling for that," he instructed the roulette man, tossing down a bill. "Dropped again!" he lamented humorously. "Can't seem to have any luck."

He drifted on to the crap game.

"Throw us the little bones, pardner," he said. "I'll go you a five on it."

He lost here, and so found himself at the table presided over by the three-card monte men. The rest of his party, who had according to instructions scattered about the place, now began quietly to gravitate in his direction.

"What kind of a lay-out is this?" inquired Orde.

The dealer held up the three cards face out.

"What kind of an eye have you got, bub?" he asked.

"Oh, I don't know. A pretty fair eye. Why?"

"Do you think you could pick out the jack when I throw them out like this?" asked the dealer.

"Sure! She's that one."

"Well," exclaimed the gambler with a pretence of disgust, "damn if you didn't! I bet you five dollars you can't do it again."

"Take you!" replied Orde. "Put up your five."

Again Orde was permitted to pick the jack.

"You've got the best eye that's been in this place since I got here," claimed the dealer admiringly. "Here, Dennis," said he to his partner, "try if you can fool this fellow."

Dennis obligingly took the cards, threw them, and lost. By this time the men, augmented by the idlers not busy with the card games, had drawn close.

"Sail into 'em, bub," encouraged one.

Whether it was that the gamblers, expert in the reading of a man's mood and intentions, sensed the fact that Orde might be led to plunge, or whether, more simply, they were using him as a capper to draw the crowd into their game, it would be difficult to say, but twice more they bungled the throw and permitted him to win.

Newmark plucked him at the sleeve.

"You're twenty dollars ahead," he muttered. "Quit it! I never saw anybody beat this game that much before."

Orde merely shrugged him off with an appearance of growing excitement, while an HABITUE of the place, probably one of the hired fighters, growled into Newmark's ear.

"Shut up, you damn dude!" warned this man. "Keep out of what ain't none of your business."

"What limit do you put on this game, anyway?" Orde leaned forward, his eyes alight.

The two gamblers spoke swiftly apart.

"How much do you want to bet?" asked one.

"Would you stand for five hundred dollars?" asked Orde.

A dead silence fell on the group. Plainly could be heard the men's quickened breathing. The shouts and noise from the card parties blundered through the stillness. Some one tiptoed across and whispered in the ear of the nearest player. A moment later the chairs at the two tables scraped back. One of them fell violently to the floor. Their occupants joined the tense group about the monte game. All the girls drew near. Only behind the bar the white-aproned bartenders wiped their glasses with apparent imperturbability, their eyes, however, on their brass knuckles hanging just beneath the counter, their ears pricked up for the riot call.

The gambler pretended to deliberate, his cool, shifty eyes running over the group before him. A small door immediately behind him swung slowly ajar an inch or so.

"Got the money?" he asked.

"Have you?" countered Orde.

Apparently satisfied, the man nodded.

"I'll go you, bub, if I lose," said he. "Lay out your money."

Orde counted out nine fifty-dollar bills and five tens. Probably no one in the group of men standing about had realised quite how much money five hundred dollars meant until they saw it thus tallied out before them.

"All right," said the gambler, taking up the cards.

"Hold on!" cried Orde. "Where's yours?"

"Oh, that's all right," the gambler reassured him. "I'm with the house. I guess McNeill's credit is good," he laughed.

"That may all be," insisted Orde, "but I'm putting up my good money, and I expect to see good money put up in return."

They wrangled over this point for some time, but Orde was obstinate. Finally the gamblers yielded. A canvass of the drawer, helped out by the bar and the other games, made up the sum. It bulked large on the table beside Orde's higher denominations.

The interested audience now consisted of the dozen men comprised by Orde's friends; nearly twice as many strangers, evidently rivermen; eight hangers-on of the joint, probably fighters and "bouncers"; half a dozen professional gamblers, and several waitresses. The four barkeepers still held their positions. Of these, the rivermen were scattered loosely back of Orde, although Orde's own friends had by now gathered compactly enough at his shoulder. The mercenaries and gamblers had divided, and flanked the table at either side. Newmark, a growing wonder and disgust creeping into his usually unexpressive face, recognised the strategic advantage of this arrangement. In case of difficulty, a determined push would separate the rivermen from the gamblers long enough for the latter to disappear quietly through the small door at the back.

"Satisfied?" inquired the gambler briefly.

"Let her flicker," replied Orde with equal brevity.

A gasp of anticipation went up. Quite coolly the gambler made his passes. With equal coolness and not the slightest hesitation, Orde planted his great red fist on one of the cards.

"That is the jack," he announced, looking the gambler in the eye.

"Oh, is it?" sneered the dealer. "Well, turn it over and let's see."

"No!" roared Orde. "YOU TURN OVER THE OTHER TWO!"

A low oath broke from the gambler, and his face contorted in a spasm. The barkeepers slid out from behind the bar. For a moment the situation was tense and threatening. The dealer with a sweeping glance again searched the faces of those before him. In that moment, probably, he made up his mind that an open scandal must be avoided. Force and broken bones, even murder, might be all right enough under colour of right. If Orde had turned up for a jack the card on which he now held his fist, and then had attempted to prove cheating, a cry of robbery and a lively fight would have given opportunity for making way with the stakes. But McNeill's could not afford to be shown up before thirty interested rivermen as running an open-and-shut brace-game. However, the gambler made a desperate try at what he must have known was a very forlorn hope.

"That isn't the way this game is played," said he. "Show up your jack."

"It's the way I play it," replied Orde sternly. "These gentlemen heard the bet." He reached over and dexterously flipped over the other two cards. "You see, neither of these is the jack; this must be."

"You win," assented the gambler, after a pause.

Orde, his fist still on the third card, began pocketing the stakes with the other hand. The gambler reached, palm up, across the table.

"Give me the other card," said he.

Orde picked it up, laughing. For a moment he seemed to hesitate, holding the bit of pasteboard tantalisingly outstretched, as though he were going to turn also this one face up. Then, quite deliberately he looked to right and to left where the fighters awaited their signal, laughed again, and handed the card to the gambler.

At once pandemonium broke loose. The rivermen of Orde's party fairly shouted with joy over the unexpected trick; the employees of the resort whispered apart; the gambler explained, low-voiced and angry, his reasons for not putting up a fight for so rich a stake.

"All to the bar!" yelled Orde.

They made a rush, and lined up and ordered their drinks. Orde poured his on the floor and took the glass belonging to the man next him.

"Get them to give you another, Tim," said he. "No knock-out drops, if I can help it."

The men drank, and some one ordered another round.

"Tim," said Orde, low-voiced, "get the crowd together and we'll pull out. I've a thousand dollars on me, and they'll sand-bag me sure if I go alone. And let's get out right off."

Ten minutes later they all stood safely on the lighted thoroughfare of Water Street.

"Good-night, boys," said Orde. "Go easy, and show up at the booms Monday."

He turned up the street toward the main part of the town. Newmark joined him.

"I'll walk a little ways with you," he explained. "And I say, Orde, I want to apologise to you. 'Most of the evening I've been thinking you the worst fool I ever saw, but you can take care of yourself at every stage of the game. The trick was good, but your taking the other fellow's drink beat it."



VIII

Orde heard no more of Newmark—and hardly thought of him—until over two weeks later.

In the meantime the riverman, assuming the more conventional garments of civilisation, lived with his parents in the old Orde homestead at the edge of town. This was a rather pretentious two-story brick structure, in the old solid, square architecture, surrounded by a small orchard, some hickories, and a garden. Orde's father had built it when he arrived in the pioneer country from New England forty years before. At that time it was considered well out in the country. Since then the town had crept to it, so that the row of grand old maples in front shaded a stone-guttered street. A little patch of corn opposite, and many still vacant lots above, placed it, however, as about the present limit of growth.

Jack Orde was the youngest and most energetic of a large family that had long since scattered to diverse cities and industries. He and Grandpa and Grandma Orde dwelt now in the big, echoing, old-fashioned house alone, save for the one girl who called herself the "help" rather than the servant. Grandpa Orde, now above sixty, was tall, straight, slender. His hair was quite white, and worn a little long. His features were finely chiselled and aquiline. From them looked a pair of piercing, young, black eyes. In his time, Grandpa Orde had been a mighty breaker of the wilderness; but his time had passed, and with the advent of a more intensive civilisation he had fallen upon somewhat straitened ways. Grandma Orde, on the other hand, was a very small, spry old lady, with a small face, a small figure, small hands and feet. She dressed in the then usual cap and black silk of old ladies. Half her time she spent at her housekeeping, which she loved, jingling about from cellar to attic store-room, seeing that Amanda, the "help," had everything in order. The other half she sat in a wooden "Dutch" rocking-chair by a window overlooking the garden. Her silk-shod feet rested neatly side by side on a carpet-covered hassock, her back against a gay tapestried cushion. Near her purred big Jim, a maltese rumoured to weigh fifteen pounds. Above her twittered a canary.

And the interior of the house itself was in keeping. The low ceilings, the slight irregularities of structure peculiar to the rather rule-of-thumb methods of the earlier builders, the deep window embrasures due to the thickness of the walls, the unexpected passages leading to unsuspected rooms, and the fact that many of these apartments were approached by a step or so up or a step or so down—these lent to it a quaint, old-fashioned atmosphere enhanced further by the steel engravings, the antique furnishings, the many-paned windows, and all the belongings of old people who have passed from a previous generation untouched by modern ideas.

To this house and these people Orde came direct from the greatness of the wilderness and the ferocity of Hell's Half-Mile. Such contrasts were possible even ten or fifteen years ago. The untamed country lay at the doors of the most modern civilisation.

Newmark, reappearing one Sunday afternoon at the end of the two weeks, was apparently bothered. He examined the Orde place for some moments; walked on beyond it; finding nothing there, he returned, and after some hesitation turned in up the tar sidewalk and pulled at the old-fashioned wire bell-pull. Grandma Orde herself answered the door.

At sight of her fine features, her dainty lace cap and mitts, and the stiffness of her rustling black silks, Newmark took off his gray felt hat.

"Good-afternoon," said he. "Will you kindly tell me where Mr. Orde lives?"

"This is Mr. Orde's," replied the little old lady.

"Pardon me," persisted Newmark, "I am looking for Mr. Jack Orde, and I was directed here. I am sorry to have troubled you."

"Mr. Jack Orde lives here," returned Grandma Orde. "He is my son. Would you like to see him?"

"If you please," assented Newmark gravely, his thin, shrewd face masking itself with its usual expression of quizzical cynicism.

"Step this way, please, and I'll call him," requested his interlocutor, standing aside from the doorway.

Newmark entered the cool, dusky interior, and was shown to the left into a dim, long room. He perched on a mahogany chair, and had time to notice the bookcases with the white owl atop, the old piano with the yellowing keys, the haircloth sofa and chairs, the steel engravings, and the two oil portraits, when Orde's large figure darkened the door.

For an instant the young man, who must just have come in from the outside sunshine, blinked into the dimness. Newmark, too, blinked back, although he could by this time see perfectly well.

Newmark had known Orde only as a riverman. Like most Easterners, then and now, he was unable to imagine a man in rough clothes as being anything but essentially a rough man. The figure he saw before him was decently and correctly dressed in what was then the proper Sunday costume. His big figure set off the cloth to advantage, and even his wind-reddened face seemed toned down and refined by the change in costume and surroundings.

"Oh, it's you, Mr. Newmark!" cried Orde in his hearty way, and holding out his hand. "I'm glad to see you. Where you been? Come on out of there. This is the 'company place.'" Without awaiting a reply, he led the way into the narrow hall, whence the two entered another, brighter room, in which Grandma Orde sat, the canary singing above her head.

"Mother," said Orde, "this is Mr. Newmark, who was with us on the drive this spring."

Grandma Orde laid her gold-bowed glasses and her black leather Bible on the stand beside her.

"Mr. Newmark and I spoke at the door," said she, extending her frail hand with dignity. "If you were on the drive, Mr. Newmark, you must have been one of the High Privates in this dreadful war we all read about."

Newmark laughed and made some appropriate reply. A few moments later, at Orde's suggestion, the two passed out a side door and back into the remains of the old orchard.

"It's pretty nice here under the trees," said Orde. "Sit down and light up. Where you been for the last couple of weeks?"

"I caught Johnson's drive and went on down river with him to the lake," replied Newmark, thrusting the offered cigar in one corner of his mouth and shaking his head at Orde's proffer of a light.

"You must like camp life."

"I do not like it at all," negatived Newmark emphatically, "but the drive interested me. It interested me so much that I've come back to talk to you about it."

"Fire ahead," acquiesced Orde.

"I'm going to ask you a few questions about yourself, and you can answer them or not, just as you please."

"Oh, I'm not bashful about my career," laughed Orde.

"How old are you?" inquired Newmark abruptly.

"Thirty."

"How long have you been doing that sort of thing—driving, I mean?"

"Off and on, about six years."

"Why did you go into that particular sort of thing?"

Orde selected a twig and carefully threw it at a lump in the turf.

"Because there's nothing ahead of shovelling but dirt," he replied with a quaint grin.

"I see," said Newmark, after a pause. "Then you think there's more future to that sort of thing than the sort of thing the rest of your friends go in for—law, and wholesale groceries, and banking and the rest of it?"

"There is for me," replied Orde simply.

"Yet you're merely river-driving on a salary at thirty."

Orde flushed slowly, and shifted his position.

"Exactly so—Mr. District Attorney," he said drily.

Newmark started from his absorption in his questioning and shifted his unlighted cigar.

"Does sound like it," he admitted; "but I'm not asking all this out of idle curiosity. I've got a scheme in my head that I think may work out big for us both."

"Well," assented Orde reservedly, "in that case—I'm foreman on this drive because my outfit went kerplunk two years ago, and I'm making a fresh go at it."

"Failed?" inquired Newmark.

"Partner skedaddled," replied Orde. "Now, if you're satisfied with my family history, suppose you tell me what the devil you're driving at."

He was plainly restive under the cross-examination to which he had been subjected.

"Look here," said Newmark, abruptly changing the subject, "you know that rapids up river flanked by shallows, where the logs are always going aground?"

"I do," replied Orde, still grim.

"Well, why wouldn't it help to put a string of piers down both sides, with booms between them to hold the logs in the deeper water?"

"It would," said Orde.

"Why isn't it done, then?"

"Who would do it?" countered Orde, leaning back more easily in the interest of this new discussion. "If Daly did it, for instance, then all the rest of the drivers would get the advantage of it for nothing."

"Get them to pay their share."

Orde grinned. "I'd like to see you get any three men to agree to anything on this river."

"And a sort of dam would help at that Spruce Rapids?"

"Sure! If you improved the river for driving, she'd be easier to drive. That goes without saying."

"How many firms drive logs on this stream?"

"Ten," replied Orde, without hesitation.

"How many men do they employ?"

"Driving?" asked Orde.

"Driving."

"About five hundred; a few more or less."

"Now suppose," Newmark leaned forward impressively, "suppose a firm should be organised to drive ALL the logs on the river. Suppose it improved the river with necessary piers, dams, and all the rest of it, so that the driving would be easier. Couldn't it drive with less than five hundred men, and couldn't it save money on the cost of driving?"

"It might," agreed Orde.

"You know the conditions here. If such a firm should be organised and should offer to drive the logs for these ten firms at so much a thousand, do you suppose it would get the business?"

"It would depend on the driving firm," said Orde. "You see, mill men have got to have their logs. They can't afford to take chances. It wouldn't pay."

"Then that's all right," agreed Newmark, with a gleam of satisfaction across his thin face. "Would you form a partnership with me having such an object in view?"

Orde threw back his head and laughed with genuine amusement.

"I guess you don't realise the situation," said he. "We'd have to have a few little things like distributing booms, and tugs, and a lot of tools and supplies and works of various kinds."

"Well, we'd get them."

It was now Orde's turn to ask questions.

"How much are you worth?" he inquired bluntly.

"About twenty thousand dollars," replied Newmark.

"Well, if I raise very much more than twenty thousand cents, I'm lucky just now."

"How much capital would we have to have?" asked Newmark.

Orde thought for several minutes, twisting the petal of an old apple-blossom between his strong, blunt fingers.

"Somewhere near seventy-five thousand dollars," he estimated at last.

"That's easy," cried Newmark. "We'll make a stock company—say a hundred thousand shares. We'll keep just enough between us to control the company—say fifty-one thousand. I'll put in my pile, and you can pay for yours out of the earnings of the company."

"That doesn't sound fair," objected Orde.

"You pay interest," explained Newmark. "Then we'll sell the rest of the stock to raise the rest of the money."

"If we can," interjected Orde.

"I think we can," asserted Newmark.

Orde fell into a brown study, occasionally throwing a twig or a particle of earth at the offending lump in the turf. Overhead the migratory warblers balanced right-side up or up-side down, searching busily among the new leaves, uttering their simple calls. The air was warm and soft and still, the sky bright. Fat hens clucked among the grasses. A feel of Sunday was in the air.

"I must have something to live on," said he thoughtfully at last.

"So must I," said Newmark. "We'll have to pay ourselves salaries, of course, but the smaller the better at first. You'll have to take charge of the men and the work and all the rest of it—I don't know anything about that. I'll attend to the incorporating and the routine, and I'll try to place the stock. You'll have to see, first of all, whether you can get contracts from the logging firms to drive the logs."

"How can I tell what to charge them?"

"We'll have to figure that very closely. You know where these different drives would start from, and how long each of them would take?"

"Oh, yes; I know the river pretty well."

"Well, then we'll figure how many days' driving there is for each, and how many men there are, and what it costs for wages, grub, tools—we'll just have to figure as near as we can to the actual cost, and then add a margin for profit and for interest on our investment."

"It might work out all right," admitted Orde.

"I'm confident it would," asserted Newmark. "And there'd be no harm figuring it all out, would there?"

"No," agreed Orde, "that would be fun all right."

At this moment Amanda appeared at the back door and waved an apron.

"Mr. Jack!" she called. "Come in to dinner."

Newmark looked puzzled, and, as he arose, glanced surreptitiously at his watch. Orde seemed to take the summons as one to be expected, however. In fact, the strange hour was the usual Sunday custom in the Redding of that day, and had to do with the late-church freedom of Amanda and her like.

"Come in and eat with us," invited Orde. "We'd be glad to have you."

But Newmark declined.

"Come up to-morrow night, then, at half-past six, for supper," Orde urged him. "We can figure on these things a little. I'm in Daly's all day, and hardly have time except evenings."

To this Newmark assented. Orde walked with him down the deep-shaded driveway with the clipped privet hedge on one side, to the iron gate that swung open when one drove over a projecting lever. There he said good-bye.

A moment later he entered the long dining-room, where Grandpa and Grandma Orde were already seated. An old-fashioned service of smooth silver and ivory-handled steel knives gave distinction to the plain white linen. A tea-pot smothered in a "cosey" stood at Grandma Orde's right. A sirloin roast on a noble platter awaited Grandpa Orde's knife.

Orde dropped into his place with satisfaction.

"Shut up, Cheep!" he remarked to a frantic canary hanging in the sunshine.

"Your friend seems a nice-appearing young man," said Grandma Orde. "Wouldn't he stay to dinner?"

"I asked him," replied Orde, "but he couldn't. He and I have a scheme for making our everlasting fortunes."

"Who is he?" asked grandma.

Orde dropped his napkin into his lap with a comical chuckle of dismay.

"Blest if I have the slightest idea, mother," he said. "Newmark joined us on the drive. Said he was a lawyer, and was out in the woods for his health. He's been with us, studying and watching the work, ever since."



IX

"I think I'll go see Jane Hubbard this evening," Orde remarked to his mother, as he arose from the table. This was his method of announcing that he would not be home for supper.

Jane Hubbard lived in a low one-story house of blue granite, situated amid a grove of oaks at the top of the hill. She was a kindly girl, whose parents gave her free swing, and whose house, in consequence, was popular with the younger people. Every Sunday she offered to all who came a "Sunday-night lunch," which consisted of cold meats, cold salad, bread, butter, cottage cheese, jam, preserves, and the like, warmed by a cup of excellent tea. These refreshments were served by the guests themselves. It did not much matter how few or how many came.

On the Sunday evening in question Orde found about the usual crowd gathered. Jane herself, tall, deliberate in movement and in speech, kindly and thoughtful, talked in a corner with Ernest Colburn, who was just out of college, and who worked in a bank. Mignonne Smith, a plump, rather pretty little body with a tremendous aureole of hair like spun golden fire, was trying to balance a croquet-ball on the end of a ruler. The ball regularly fell off. Three young men, standing in attentive attitudes, thereupon dove forward in an attempt to catch it before it should hit the floor—which it generally did with a loud thump. A collapsed chair of slender lines stacked against the wall attested previous acrobatics. This much Orde, standing in the doorway, looked upon quite as the usual thing. Only he missed the Incubus. Searching the room with his eyes, he at length discovered that incoherent, desiccated, but persistent youth VIS-A-VIS with a stranger. Orde made out the white of her gown in the shadows, the willowy outline of her small and slender figure, and the gracious forward bend of her head.

The company present caught sight of Orde standing in the doorway, and suspended occupations to shout at him joyfully. He was evidently a favourite. The strange girl in the corner turned to him a white, long face, of which he could see only the outline and the redness of the lips where the lamplight reached them. She leaned slightly forward and the lips parted. Orde's muscular figure, standing square and uncompromising in the doorway, the out-of-door freshness of his complexion, the steadiness of his eyes laughing back a greeting, had evidently attracted her. Or perhaps anything was a relief from the Incubus.

"So you're back at last, are you, Jack?" drawled Jane in her lazy, good-natured way. "Come and meet Miss Bishop. Carroll, I want to present Mr. Orde."

Orde bowed ceremoniously into the penumbra cast by the lamp's broad shade. The girl inclined gracefully her small head with the glossy hair. The Incubus, his thin hands clasped on his knee, his sallow face twisted in one of its customary wry smiles, held to the edge of his chair with characteristic pertinacity.

"Well, Walter," Orde addressed him genially, "are you having a good time?"

"Yes-indeed!" replied the Incubus as though it were one word.

His chair was planted squarely to exclude all others. Orde surveyed the situation with good-humour.

"Going to keep the other fellow from getting a chance, I see."

"Yes-indeed!" replied the Incubus.

Orde bent over, and with great ease lifted Incubus, chair, and all, and set him facing Mignonne Smith and the croquet-ball.

"Here, Mignonne," said he, "I've brought you another assistant."

He returned to the lamp, to find the girl, her dark eyes alight with amusement, watching him intently. She held the tip of a closed fan against her lips, which brought her head slightly forward in an attitude as though she listened. Somehow there was about her an air of poise, of absolute balanced repose quite different from Jane's rather awkward statics, and in direct contrast to Mignonne's dynamics.

"Walter is a very bright man in his own line," said Orde, swinging forward a chair, "but he mustn't be allowed any monopolies."

"How do you know I want him so summarily removed?" the girl asked him, without changing either her graceful attitude of suspended motion or the intentness of her gaze.

"Well," argued Orde, "I got him to say all he ever says to any girl—'Yes-indeed!'—so you couldn't have any more conversation from him. If you want to look at him, why, there he is in plain sight. Besides, I want to talk to you myself."

"Do you always get what you want?" inquired the girl.

Orde laughed.

"Any one can get anything he wants, if only he wants it bad enough," he asserted.

The girl pondered this for a moment, and finally lowered and opened her fan, and threw back her head in a more relaxed attitude.

"Some people," she amended. "However, I forgive you. I will even flatter you by saying I am glad you came. You look to have reached the age of discretion. I venture to say that these boys' idea of a lively evening is to throw bread about the table."

Orde flushed a little. The last time he had supped at Jane Hubbard's, that was exactly what they did do.

"They are young, of course," he said, "and you and I are very old and wise. But having a noisy, good time isn't such a great crime—or is it where you came from?"

The girl leaned forward, a sparkle of interest in her eyes.

"Are you and I going to fight?" she demanded.

"That depends on you," returned Orde squarely, but with perfect good-humour.

They eyed each other a moment. Then the girl closed her fan, and leaned forward to touch him on the arm with it.

"You are quite right not to allow me to say mean things about your friends, and I am a nasty little snip."

Orde bowed with sudden gravity.

"And they do throw bread," said he.

They both laughed. She leaned back with a movement of satisfaction, seeming to sink into the shadows.

"Now, tell me; what do you do?"

"What do I do?" asked Orde, puzzled.

"Yes. Everybody does something out West here. It's a disgrace not to do something, isn't it?"

"Oh, my business! I'm a river-driver just now."

"A river-driver?" she repeated, once more leaning forward. "Why, I've just been hearing a great deal about you."

"That so?" he inquired.

"Yes, from Mrs. Baggs."

"Oh!" said Orde. "Then you know what a drunken, swearing, worthless lot of bums and toughs we are, don't you?"

For the first time, in some subtle way she broke the poise of her attitude.

"There is Hell's Half-Mile," she reminded him.

"Oh, yes," said Orde bitterly, "there's Hell's Half-Mile! Whose fault is that? My rivermen's? My boys? Look here! I suppose you couldn't understand it, if you tried a month; but suppose you were working out in the woods nine months of the year, up early in the morning and in late at night. Suppose you slept in rough blankets, on the ground or in bunks, ate rough food, never saw a woman or a book, undertook work to scare your city men up a tree and into a hole too easy, risked your life a dozen times a week in a tangle of logs, with the big river roaring behind just waiting to swallow you; saw nothing but woods and river, were cold and hungry and wet, and so tired you couldn't wiggle, until you got to feeling like the thing was never going to end, and until you got sick of it way through in spite of the excitement and danger. And then suppose you hit town, where there were all the things you hadn't had—and the first thing you struck was Hell's Half-Mile. Say! you've seen water behind a jam, haven't you? Water-power's a good thing in a mill course, where it has wheels to turn; but behind a jam it just RIPS things—oh, what's the use talking! A girl doesn't know what it means. She couldn't understand."

He broke off with an impatient gesture. She was looking at him intently, her lips again half-parted.

"I think I begin to understand a little," said she softly. She smiled to herself. "But they are a hard and heartless class in spite of all their energy and courage, aren't they?" she drew him out.

"Hard and heartless!" exploded Orde. "There's no kinder lot of men on earth, let me tell you. Why, there isn't a man on that river who doesn't chip in five or ten dollars when a man is hurt or killed; and that means three or four days' hard work for him. And he may not know or like the injured man at all! Why—"

"What's all the excitement?" drawled Jane Hubbard behind them. "Can't you make it a to-be-continued-in-our-next? We're 'most starved."

"Yes-indeed!" chimed in the Incubus.

The company trooped out to the dining-room where the table, spread with all the good things, awaited them.

"Ernest, you light the candles," drawled Jane, drifting slowly along the table with her eye on the arrangements, "and some of you boys go get the butter and the milk-pitcher from the ice-box."

To Orde's relief, no one threw any bread, although the whole-hearted fun grew boisterous enough before the close of the meal. Miss Bishop sat directly across from him. He had small chance of conversation with her in the hubbub that raged, but he gained full leisure to examine her more closely in the fuller illumination. Throughout, her note was of fineness. Her hands, as he had already noticed, were long, the fingers tapering; her wrists were finely moulded, but slender, and running without abrupt swelling of muscles into the long lines of her forearm; her figure was rounded, but built on the curves of slenderness; her piled, glossy hair was so fine that though it was full of wonderful soft shadows denied coarser tresses, its mass hardly did justice to its abundance. Her face, again, was long and oval, with a peculiar transparence to the skin and a peculiar faint, healthy circulation of the blood well below the surface, which relieved her complexion of pallor, but did not give her a colour. The lips, on the contrary, were satin red, and Orde was mildly surprised, after his recent talk, to find them sensitively moulded, and with a quaint, child-like quirk at the corners. Her eyes were rather contemplative, and so black as to resemble spots.

In spite of her half-scornful references to "bread-throwing," she joined with evident pleasure in the badinage and more practical fun which struck the note of the supper. Only Orde thought to discern even in her more boisterous movements a graceful, courteous restraint, to catch in the bend of her head a dainty concession to the joy of the moment, to hear in the tones of her laughter a reservation of herself, which nevertheless was not at all a reservation, against the others.

After the meal was finished, each had his candle to blow out, and then all returned to the parlour, leaving the debris for the later attention of the "hired help."

Orde with determination made his way to Miss Bishop's side. She smiled at him.

"You see, I am a hypocrite as well as a mean little snip," said she. "I threw a little bread myself."

"Threw bread?" repeated Orde. "I didn't see you."

"The moon is made of green cheese," she mocked him, "and there are countries where men's heads do grow beneath their shoulders." She moved gracefully away toward Jane Hubbard. "Do you Western 'business men' never deal in figures of speech as well as figures of the other sort?" she wafted back to him over her shoulder.

"I was very stupid," acknowledged Orde, following her.

She stopped and faced him in the middle of the room, smiling quizzically.

"Well?" she challenged.

"Well, what?" asked Orde, puzzled.

"I thought perhaps you wanted to ask me something."

"Why?"

"Your following me," she explained, the corners of her mouth smiling. "I had turned away—"

"I just wanted to talk to you," said Orde.

"And you always get what you want," she repeated. "Well?" she conceded, with a shrug of mock resignation. But the four other men here cut in with a demand.

"Music!" they clamoured. "We want music!"

With a nod, Miss Bishop turned to the piano, sweeping aside her white draperies as she sat. She struck a few soft chords, and then, her long hands wandering idly and softly up and down the keys, she smiled at them over her shoulder.

"What shall it be?" she inquired.

Some one thrust an open song-book on the rack in front of her. The others gathered close about, leaning forward to see.

Song followed song, at first quickly, then at longer intervals. At last the members of the chorus dropped away one by one to occupations of their own. The girl still sat at the piano, her head thrown back idly, her hands wandering softly in and out of melodies and modulations. Watching her, Orde finally saw only the shimmer of her white figure, and the white outline of her head and throat. All the rest of the room was gray from the concentration of his gaze. At last her hands fell in her lap. She sat looking straight ahead of her.

Orde at once arose and came to her.

"That was a wonderfully quaint and beautiful thing," said he. "What was it?"

She turned to him, and he saw that the mocking had gone from her eyes and mouth, leaving them quite simple, like a child's.

"Did you like it?" she asked.

"Yes," said Orde. He hesitated and stammered awkwardly. "It was so still and soothing, it made me think of the river sometimes about dusk. What was it?"

"It wasn't anything. I was improvising."

"You made it up yourself?"

"It was myself, I suppose. I love to build myself a garden, and wander on until I lose myself in it. I'm glad there was a river in the garden—a nice, still, twilight river."

She flashed up at him, her head sidewise.

"There isn't always." She struck a crashing discord on the piano.

Every one looked up at the sudden noise of it.

"Oh, don't stop!" they cried in chorus, as though each had been listening intently.

The girl laughed up at Orde in amusement. Somehow this flash of an especial understanding between them to the exclusion of the others sent a warm glow to his heart.

"I do wish you had your harp here," said Jane Hubbard, coming indolently forward. "You just ought to hear her play the harp," she told the rest. "It's just the best thing you ever DID hear!"

At this moment the outside door opened to admit Mr and Mrs. Hubbard, who had, according to their usual Sunday custom, been spending the evening with a neighbour. This was the signal for departure. The company began to break up.

Orde pushed his broad shoulders in to screen Carroll Bishop from the others.

"Are you staying here?" he asked.

She opened her eyes wide at his brusqueness.

"I'm visiting Jane," she replied at length, with an affectation of demureness.

"Are you going to be here long?" was Orde's next question.

"About a month."

"I am coming to see you," announced Orde. "Good-night."

He took her hand, dropped it, and followed the others into the hall, leaving her standing by the lamp. She watched him until the outer door had closed behind him. Not once did he look back. Jane Hubbard, returning after a moment from the hall, found her at the piano again, her head slightly one side, playing with painful and accurate exactness a simple one-finger melody.

Orde walked home down the hill in company with the Incubus. Neither had anything to say; Orde because he was absorbed in thought, the Incubus because nothing occurred to draw from him his one remark. Their feet clipped sharply against the tar walks, or rang more hollow on the boards. Overhead the stars twinkled through the still-bare branches of the trees. With few exceptions the houses were dark. People "retired" early in Redding. An occasional hall light burned dimly, awaiting some one's return. At the gate of the Orde place, Orde roused himself to say good-night. He let himself into the dim-lighted hall, hung up his hat, and turned out the gas. For some time he stood in the dark, quite motionless; then, with the accuracy of long habitude, he walked confidently to the narrow stairs and ascended them. Subconsciously he avoided the creaking step, but outside his mother's door he stopped, arrested by a greeting from within.

"That you, Jack?" queried Grandma Orde.

For answer Orde pushed open the door, which stood an inch or so ajar, and entered. A dim light from a distant street-lamp, filtered through the branches of a tree, flickered against the ceiling. By its aid he made out the great square bed, and divined the tiny figure of his mother. He seated himself sidewise on the edge of the bed.

"Go to Jane's?" queried grandma in a low voice, to avoid awakening grandpa, who slept in the adjoining room.

"Yes," replied Orde, in the same tone.

"Who was there?"

"Oh, about the usual crowd."

He fell into an abstracted silence, which endured for several minutes.

"Mother," said he abruptly, at last, "I've met the girl I want for my wife."

Grandma Orde sat up in bed.

"Who is she?" she demanded.

"Her name is Carroll Bishop," said Orde, "and she's visiting Jane Hubbard."

"Yes, but WHO is she?" insisted Grandma Orde. "Where is she from?"

Orde stared at her in the dim light.

"Why, mother," he repeated for the second time that day, "blest if I know that!"



X

Orde was up and out at six o'clock the following morning. By eight he had reported for work at Daly's mill, where, with the assistance of a portion of the river crew, he was occupied in sorting the logs in the booms. Not until six o'clock in the evening did the whistle blow for the shut-down. Then he hastened home, to find that Newmark had preceded him by some few moments and was engaged in conversation with Grandma Orde. The young man was talking easily, though rather precisely and with brevity. He nodded to Orde and finished his remark.

After supper Orde led the way up two flights of narrow stairs to his own room. This was among the gables, a chamber of strangely diversified ceiling, which slanted here and there according to the demands of the roof outside.

"Well," said he, "I've made up my mind to-day to go in with you. It may not work out, but it's a good chance, and I want to get in something that looks like money. I don't know who you are, nor how much of a business man you are or what your experience is, but I'll risk it."

"I'm putting in twenty thousand dollars," pointed out Newmark.

"And I'm putting in my everlasting reputation," said Orde. "If we tell these fellows that we'll get out their logs for them, and then don't do it, I'll be DEAD around here."

"So that's about a stand-off," said Newmark. "I'm betting twenty thousand on what I've seen and heard of you, and you're risking your reputation that I don't want to drop my money."

Orde laughed.

"And I reckon we're both right," he responded.

"Still," Newmark pursued the subject, "I've no objection to telling you about myself. New York born and bred; experience with Cooper and Dunne, brokers, eight years. Money from a legacy. Parents dead. No relatives to speak to."

Orde nodded gravely twice in acknowledgment.

"Now," said Newmark, "have you had time to do any figuring?"

"Well," replied Orde, "I got at it a little yesterday afternoon, and a little this noon. I have a rough idea." He produced a bundle of scribbled papers from his coat-pocket. "Here you are. I take Daly as a sample, because I've been with his outfit. It costs him to run and deliver his logs one hundred miles about two dollars a thousand feet. He's the only big manufacturer up here; the rest are all at Monrovia, where they can get shipping by water. I suppose it costs the other nine firms doing business on the river from two to two and a half a thousand."

Newmark produced a note-book and began to jot down figures.

"Do these men all conduct separate drives?" he inquired.

"All but Proctor and old Heinzman. They pool in together."

"Now," went on Newmark, "if we were to drive the whole river, how could we improve on that?"

"Well, I haven't got it down very fine, of course," Orde told him, "but in the first place we wouldn't need so many men. I could run the river on three hundred easy enough. That saves wages and grub on two hundred right there. And, of course, a few improvements on the river would save time, which in our case would mean money. We would not need so many separate cook outfits and all that. Of course, that part of it we'd have to get right down and figure on, and it will take time. Then, too, if we agreed to sort and deliver, we'd have to build sorting booms down at Monrovia."

"Suppose we had all that. What, for example, do you reckon you could bring Daly's logs down for?"

Orde fell into deep thought, from which he emerged occasionally to scribble on the back of his memoranda.

"I suppose somewhere about a dollar," he announced at last. He looked up a trifle startled. "Why," he cried, "that looks like big money! A hundred per cent!"

Newmark watched him for a moment, a quizzical smile wrinkling the corners of his eyes.

"Hold your horses," said he at last. "I don't know anything about this business, but I can see a few things. In the first place, close figuring will probably add a few cents to that dollar. And then, of course, all our improvements will be absolutely valueless to anybody after we've got through using them. You said yesterday they'd probably stand us in seventy-five thousand dollars. Even at a dollar profit, we'd have to drive seventy-five million before we got a cent back. And, of course, we've got to agree to drive for a little less than they could themselves."

"That's so," agreed Orde, his crest falling.

"However," said Newmark briskly, as he arose, "there's good money in it, as you say. Now, how soon can you leave Daly?"

"By the middle of the week we ought to be through with this job."

"That's good. Then we'll go into this matter of expense thoroughly, and establish our schedule of rates to submit to the different firms."

Newmark said a punctilious farewell to Mr. and Mrs. Orde.

"By the way," said Orde to him at the gate, "where are you staying?"

"At the Grand."

"I know most of the people here—all the young folks. I'd be glad to take you around and get you acquainted."

"Thank you," replied Newmark, "you are very kind. But I don't go in much for that sort of thing, and I expect to be very busy now on this new matter; so I won't trouble you."



XI

The new partners, as soon as Orde had released himself from Daly, gave all their time to working out a schedule of tolls. Orde drew on his intimate knowledge of the river and its tributaries, and the locations of the different rollways, to estimate as closely as possible the time it would take to drive them. He also hunted up Tom North and others of the older men domiciled in the cheap boarding-houses of Hell's Half-Mile, talked with them, and verified his own impressions. Together, he and Newmark visited the supply houses, got prices, obtained lists. All the evenings they figured busily, until at last Newmark expressed himself as satisfied.

"Now, Orde," said he, "here is where you come in. It's now your job to go out and interview these men and get their contracts for driving their next winter's cut."

But Orde drew back.

"Look here, Joe," he objected, "that's more in your line. You can talk business to them better than I can."

"Not a bit," negatived Newmark. "They don't know me from Adam, and they do know you, and all about you. We've got to carry this thing through at first on our face, and they'd be more apt to entrust the matter to you personally."

"All right," agreed Orde. "I'll start in on Daly."

He did so the following morning. Daly swung his bulk around in his revolving office-chair and listened attentively.

"Well, Jack," said he, "I think you're a good riverman, and I believe you can do it. I'd be only too glad to get rid of the nuisance of it, let alone get it done cheaper. If you'll draw up your contract and bring it in here, I'll sign it. I suppose you'll break out the rollways?"

"No," said Orde; "we hadn't thought of doing more than the driving and distributing. You'll have to deliver the logs in the river. Maybe another year, after we get better organised, we'll be able to break rollways—at a price per thousand—but until we get a-going we'll have to rush her through."

Orde repeated this to his associate.

"That was smooth enough sailing," he exulted.

"Yes," pondered Newmark, removing his glasses and tapping his thumb with their edge. "Yes," he repeated, "that was smooth sailing. What was that about rollways?"

"Oh, I told him we'd expect him to break out his own," said Orde.

"Yes, but what does that mean exactly?"

"Why," explained Orde, with a slight stare of surprise, "when the logs are cut and hauled during the winter, they are banked on the river-banks, and even in the river-channel itself. Then, when the thaws come in the spring, these piles are broken down and set afloat in the river."

"I see," said Newmark. "Well, but why shouldn't we undertake that part of it? I should think that would he more the job of the river-drivers."

"It would hold back our drive too much to have to stop and break rollways," explained Orde.

The next morning they took the early train for Monrovia, where were situated the big mills and the offices of the nine other lumber companies. Within an hour they had descended at the small frame terminal station, and were walking together up the village street.

Monrovia was at that time a very spread-out little place of perhaps two thousand population. It was situated a half mile from Lake Michigan, behind the sparsely wooded sand hills of its shore. From the river, which had here grown to a great depth and width, its main street ran directly at right angles. Four brick blocks of three stories lent impressiveness to the vista. The stores in general, however, were low frame structures. All faced broad plank sidewalks raised above the street to the level of a waggon body. From this main street ran off, to right and left, other streets, rendered lovely by maple trees that fairly met across the way. In summer, over sidewalk and roadway alike rested a dense, refreshing dark shadow that seemed to throw from itself an odour of coolness. This was rendered further attractive by the warm spicy odour of damp pine that arose from the resilient surface of sawdust and shingles broken beneath the wheels of traffic. Back from these trees, in wide, well-cultivated lawns, stood the better residences. They were almost invariably built of many corners, with steep roofs meeting each other at all angles, with wide and ornamented red chimneys, numerous windows, and much scroll work adorning each apex and cornice. The ridge poles bristled in fancy foot-high palisades of wood. Chimneys were provided with lightning-rods. Occasionally an older structure, on square lines, recorded the era of a more dignified architecture. Everywhere ran broad sidewalks and picket fences. Beyond the better residence districts were the board shanties of the mill workers.

Orde and Newmark tramped up the plank walk to the farthest brick building. When they came to a cross street, they had to descend to it by a short flight of steps on one side, and ascend from it by a corresponding flight on the other. At the hotel, Newmark seated himself in a rocking-chair next the big window.

"Good luck!" said he.

Orde mounted a wide, dark flight of stairs that led from the street to a darker hall. The smell of stale cigars and cocoa matting was in the air. Down the dim length of this hall he made his way to a door, which without ceremony he pushed open.

He found himself in a railed-off space, separated from the main part of the room by a high walnut grill.

"Mr. Heinzman in?" he asked of a clerk.

"I think so," replied the clerk, to whom evidently Orde was known.

Orde spent the rest of the morning with Heinzman, a very rotund, cautious person of German extraction and accent. Heinzman occupied the time in asking questions of all sorts about the new enterprise. At twelve he had not in any way committed himself nor expressed an opinion. He, however, instructed Orde to return the afternoon of the following day.

"I vill see Proctor," said he.

Orde, rather exhausted, returned to find Newmark still sitting in the rocking-chair with his unlighted cigar. The two had lunch together, after which Orde, somewhat refreshed, started out. He succeeded in getting two more promises of contracts and two more deferred interviews.

"That's going a little faster," he told Newmark cheerfully.

The following morning, also, he was much encouraged by the reception his plan gained from the other lumbermen. At lunch he recapitulated to Newmark.

"That's four contracts already," said he, "and three more practically a sure thing. Proctor and Heinzman are slower than molasses about everything, and mean as pusley, and Johnson's up in the air, the way he always is, for fear some one's going to do him."

"It isn't a bad outlook," admitted Newmark.

But Heinzman offered a new problem for Orde's consideration.

"I haf talked with Proctor," said he, "and ve like your scheme. If you can deliffer our logs here for two dollars and a quarter, why, that is better as ve can do it; but how do ve know you vill do it?"

"I'll guarantee to get them here all right," laughed Orde.

"But what is your guarantee good for?" persisted Heinzman blandly, locking his fingers over his rotund little stomach. "Suppose the logs are not deliffered—what then? How responsible are you financially?"

"Well, we're investing seventy-five thousand dollars or so."

Heinzman rubbed his thumb and forefinger together and wafted the imaginary pulverisation away.

"Worth that for a judgment," said he.

He allowed a pause to ensue.

"If you vill give a bond for the performance of your contract," pursued Heinzman, "that vould be satisfactory."

Orde's mind was struck chaotic by the reasonableness of this request, and the utter impossibility of acceding to it.

"How much of a bond?" he asked.

"Twenty-fife thousand vould satisfy us," said Heinzman. "Bring us a suitable bond for that amount and ve vill sign your contract."

Orde ran down the stairs to find Newmark. "Heinzman won't sign unless we give him a bond for performance," he said in a low tone, as he dropped into the chair next to Newmark.

Newmark removed his unlighted cigar, looked at the chewed end, and returned it to the corner of his mouth.

"Heinzman has sense," said he drily. "I was wondering if ordinary business caution was unknown out here."

"Can we get such a bond? Nobody would go on my bond for that amount."

"Mine either," said Newmark. "We'll just have to let them go and drive ahead without them. I only hope they won't spread the idea. Better get those other contracts signed up as soon as we can."

With this object in view, Orde started out early the next morning, carrying with him the duplicate contracts on which Newmark had been busy.

"Rope 'em in," advised Newmark. "It's Saturday, and we don't want to let things simmer over Sunday, if we can help it."

About eleven o'clock a clerk of the Welton Lumber Co. entered Mr. Welton's private office to deliver to Orde a note.

"This just came by special messenger," he explained.

Orde, with an apology, tore it open. It was from Heinzman, and requested an immediate interview. Orde delayed only long enough to get Mr. Welton's signature, then hastened as fast as his horse could take him across the drawbridge to the village.

Heinzman he found awaiting him. The little German, with his round, rosy cheeks, his dot of a nose, his big spectacles, and his rotund body, looked even more than usual like a spider or a Santa Clause—Orde could not decide which.

"I haf been thinking of that bond," he began, waving a pudgy hand toward a seat, "and I haf been talking with Proctor."

"Yes," said Orde hopefully.

"I suppose you would not be prepared to gif a bond?"

"I hardly think so."

"Vell, suppose ve fix him this way," went on Heinzman, clasping his hands over his stomach and beaming through his spectacles. "Proctor and I haf talked it ofer, and ve are agreet that the probosition is a good one. Also ve think it is vell to help the young fellers along." He laughed silently in such a manner as to shake himself all over. "Ve do not vish to be too severe, and yet ve must be assured that ve get our logs on time. Now, I unterstood you to say that this new concern is a stock company."

Orde did not remember having said so, but he nodded.

"Vell, if you gif us a bond secured with stock in the new company, that would be satisfactory to us."

Orde's face cleared.

"Do you mean that, Mr. Heinzman?"

"Sure. Ve must haf some security, but ve do not vish to be too hard on you boys."

"Now, I call that a mighty good way out!" cried Orde.

"Make your contract out according to these terms, then," said Heinzman, handing him a paper, "and bring it in Monday."

Orde glanced over the slip. It recited two and a quarter as the agreed price; specified the date of delivery at Heinzman and Proctor's booms; named twenty-five thousand dollars as the amount of the bond, to be secured by fifty thousand dollars' worth of stock in the new company. This looked satisfactory. Orde arose.

"I'm much obliged to you, Mr. Heinzman," said he. "I'll bring it around Monday."

He had reached the gate to the grill before Heinzman called him back.

"By the vay," the little German beamed up at him, swinging his fat legs as the office-chair tipped back on its springs, "if it is to be a stock company, you vill be selling some of the stock to raise money, is it not so?"

"Yes," agreed Orde, "I expect so."

"How much vill you capitalise for?"

"We expect a hundred thousand ought to do the trick," replied Orde.

"Vell," said Heinzman, "ven you put it on the market, come and see me." He nodded paternally at Orde, beaming through his thick spectacles.

That evening, well after six, Orde returned to the hotel. After freshening up in the marbled and boarded washroom, he hunted up Newmark.

"Well, Joe," said he, "I'm as hungry as a bear. Come on, eat, and I'll tell you all about it."

They deposited their hats on the racks and pushed open the swinging screen doors that led into the dining-room. There they were taken in charge by a marvellously haughty and redundant head-waitress, who signalled them to follow down through ranks of small tables watched by more stately damsels. Newmark, reserved and precise, irreproachably correct in his neat gray, seemed enveloped in an aloofness as impenetrable as that of the head-waitress herself. Orde, however, was as breezy as ever. He hastened his stride to overtake the head-waitress.

"Annie, be good!" he said in his jolly way. "We've got business to talk. Put us somewhere alone."

Newmark nodded approval, and thrust his hand in his pocket. But Annie looked up into Orde's frank, laughing face, and her lips curved ever so faintly in the condescension of a smile.

"Sure, sorr," said she, in a most unexpected brogue.

"Well, I've got 'em all," said Orde, as soon as the waitress had gone with the order. "But the best stroke of business you'd never guess. I roped in Heinzman."

"Good!" approved Newmark briefly.

"It was really pretty decent of the little Dutchman. He agreed to let us put up our stock as security. Of course, that security is good only if we win out; and if we win out, why, then he'll get his logs, so he won't have any use for security. So it's just one way of beating the devil around the bush. He evidently wanted to give us the business, but he hated like the devil to pass up his rules—you know how those old shellbacks are."

"H'm, yes," said Newmark.

The waitress sailed in through a violently kicked swinging door, bearing aloft a tin tray heaped perilously. She slanted around a corner in graceful opposition to the centrifugal, brought the tray to port on a sort of landing stage by a pillar, and began energetically to distribute small "iron-ware" dishes, each containing a dab of something. When the clash of arrival had died, Orde went on:

"I got into your department a little, too."

"How's that?" asked Newmark, spearing a baked potato. "Heinzman said he'd buy some of our stock. He seems to think we have a pretty good show."

Newmark paused, his potato half-way to his plate.

"Kind of him," said he after a moment. "Did he sign a contract?"

"It wasn't made out," Orde reminded him. "I've the memoranda here. We'll make it out to-night. I am to bring it in Monday."

"I see we're hung up here over Sunday," observed Newmark. "No Sunday trains to Redding."

Orde became grave.

"I know it. I tried to hurry matters to catch the six o'clock, but couldn't make it." His round, jolly face fell sombre, as though a light within had been extinguished. After a moment the light returned. "Can't be helped," said he philosophically.

They ate hungrily, then drifted out into the office again, where Orde lit a cigar.

"Now, let's see your memoranda," said Newmark.

He frowned over the three simple items for some time.

"It's got me," he confessed at last.

"What?" inquired Orde.

"What Heinzman is up to."

"What do you mean?" asked Orde, turning in his chair with an air of slow surprise.

"It all looks queer to me. He's got something up his sleeve. Why should he take a bond with that security from us? If we can't deliver the logs, our company fails; that makes the stock worthless; that makes the bond worthless—just when it is needed. Of course, it's as plain as the nose on your face that he thinks the proposition a good one and is trying to get control."

"Oh, no!" cried Orde, astounded.

"Orde, you're all right on the river," said Newmark, with a dry little laugh, "but you're a babe in the woods at this game."

"But Heinzman is honest," cried Orde. "Why, he is a church member, and has a class in Sunday-school."

Newmark selected a cigar from his case, examined it from end to end, finally put it between his lips. The corners of his mouth were twitching quietly with amusement.

"Besides, he is going to buy some stock," added Orde, after a moment.

"Heinzman has not the slightest intention of buying a dollar's worth of stock," asserted Newmark.

"But why—"

"—Did he make that bluff?" finished Newmark. "Because he wanted to find out how much stock would be issued. You told him it would be a hundred thousand dollars, didn't you?"

"Why—yes, I believe I did," said Orde, pondering. Newmark threw back his head and laughed noiselessly.

"So now he knows that if we forfeit the bond he'll have controlling interest," he pointed out.

Orde smoked rapidly, his brow troubled.

"But what I can't make out," reflected Newmark, "is why he's so sure we'll have to forfeit."

"I think he's just taking a long shot at it," suggested Orde, who seemed finally to have decided against Newmark's opinion. "I believe you're shying at mare's nests."

"Not he. He has some good reason for thinking we won't deliver the logs. Why does he insist on putting in a date for delivery? None of the others does."

"I don't know," replied Orde. "Just to put some sort of a time limit on the thing, I suppose."

"You say you surely can get the drive through by then?"

Orde laughed.

"Sure? Why, it gives me two weeks' leeway over the worst possible luck I could have. You're too almighty suspicious, Joe."

Newmark shook his head.

"You let me figure this out," said he.

But bedtime found him without a solution. He retired to his room under fire of Orde's good-natured raillery. Orde himself shut his door, the smile still on his lips. As he began removing his coat, however, the smile died. The week had been a busy one. Hardly had he exchanged a dozen words with his parents, for he had even been forced to eat his dinner and supper away from home. This Sunday he had promised himself to make his deferred but much-desired call on Jane Hubbard—and her guest. He turned out the gas with a shrug of resignation. For the first time his brain cleared of its turmoil of calculations, of guesses, of estimates, and of men. He saw clearly the limited illumination cast downward by the lamp beneath its wide shade, the graceful, white figure against the shadow of the easy chair, the oval face cut in half by the lamplight to show plainly the red lips with the quaint upward quirks at the corners, and dimly the inscrutable eyes and the hair with the soft shadows. With a sigh he fell asleep.

Some time in the night he was awakened by a persistent tapping on the door. In the woodsman's manner, he was instantly broad awake. He lit the gas and opened the door to admit Newmark, partially dressed over his night gown.

"Orde," said he briefly and without preliminary, "didn't you tell me the other day that rollways were piled both on the banks and IN the river?"

"Yes, sometimes," said Orde. "Why?

"Then they might obstruct the river?"

"Certainly."

"I thought so!" cried Newmark, with as near an approach to exultation as he ever permitted himself. "Now, just one other thing: aren't Heinzman's rollways below most of the others?"

"Yes, I believe they are," said Orde.

"And, of course, it was agreed, as usual, that Heinzman was to break out his own rollways?"

"I see," said Orde slowly. "You think he intends to delay things enough so we can't deliver on the date agreed on."

"I know it," stated Newmark positively.

"But if he refuses to deliver the logs, no court of law will—"

"Law!" cried Newmark. "Refuse to deliver! You don't know that kind. He won't refuse to deliver. There'll just be a lot of inevitable delays, and his foreman will misunderstand, and all that. You ought to know more about that than I do."

Orde nodded, his eye abstracted.

"It's a child-like scheme," commented Newmark. "If I'd had more knowledge of the business, I'd have seen it sooner."

"I'd never have seen it at all," said Orde humbly. "You seem to be the valuable member of this firm, Joe."

"In my way," said Newmark, "you in yours. We ought to make a good team."



XII

Sunday afternoon, Orde, leaving Newmark to devices of his own, walked slowly up the main street, turned to the right down one of the shaded side residence streets that ended finally in a beautiful glistening sand-hill. Up this he toiled slowly, starting at every step avalanches and streams down the slope. Shortly he found himself on the summit, and paused for a breath of air from the lake.

He was just above the tops of the maples, which seen from this angle stretched away like a forest through which occasionally thrust roofs and spires. Some distance beyond a number of taller buildings and the red of bricks were visible. Beyond them still were other sand-hills, planted raggedly with wind-twisted and stunted trees. But between the brick buildings and these sand-hills flowed the river—wide, deep, and still—bordered by the steamboat landings on the town side and by fishermen's huts and net-racks and small boats on the other. Orde seated himself on the smooth, clean sand and removed his hat. He saw these things, and in imagination the far upper stretches of the river, with the mills and yards and booms extending for miles; and still above them the marshes and the flats where the river widened below the Big Bend. That would be the location for the booms of the new company—a cheap property on which the partners had already secured a valuation. And below he dropped in imagination with the slackening current until between two greater sand-hills than the rest the river ran out through the channel made by two long piers to the lake—blue, restless, immeasurable. To right and left stretched the long Michigan coast, with its low yellow hills topped with the green of twisted pines, firs, and beeches, with always its beach of sand, deep and dry to the very edge of its tideless sea, strewn with sawlogs, bark, and the ancient remains of ships.

After he had cooled he arose and made his way back to a pleasant hardwood forest of maple and beech. Here the leaves were just bursting from their buds. Underfoot the early spring flowers—the hepaticas, the anemones, the trilium, the dog-tooth violets, the quaint, early, bright-green undergrowths—were just reaching their perfection. Migration was in full tide. Birds, little and big, flashed into view and out again, busy in the mystery of their northward pilgrimage, giving the appearance of secret and silent furtiveness, yet each uttering his characteristic call from time to time, as though for a signal to others of the host. The woods were swarming as city streets, yet to Orde these little creatures were as though invisible. He stood in the middle of a great multitude, he felt himself under the observation of many bright eyes, he heard the murmuring and twittering that proclaimed a throng, he sensed an onward movement that flowed slowly but steadily toward the pole; nevertheless, a flash of wings, a fluttering little body, the dip of a hasty short flight, represented the visible tokens. Across the pale silver sun of April their shadows flickered, and with them flickered the tracery of new leaves and the delicacy of the lace-like upper branches.

Orde walked slowly farther and farther into the forest, lost in an enjoyment which he could not have defined accurately, but which was so integral a portion of his nature that it had drawn him from the banks and wholesale groceries to the woods. After a while he sat down on a log and lit his pipe. Ahead the ground sloped upward. Dimly through the half-fronds of the early season he could make out the yellow of sands and the deep complementary blue of the sky above them. He knew the Lake to lie just beyond. With the thought he arose. A few moments later he stood on top the hill, gazing out over the blue waters.

Very blue they were, with a contrasting snowy white fringe of waves breaking gently as far up the coast as the eye could reach. The beach, on these tideless waters, was hard and smooth only in the narrow strip over which ran the wash of the low surf. All the rest of the expanse of sand back to the cliff-like hills lay dry and tumbled into hummocks and drifts, from which projected here a sawlog cast inland from a raft by some long-past storm, there a slab, again a ship's rib sticking gaunt and defiant from the shifting, restless medium that would smother it. And just beyond the edge of the hard sand, following the long curves of the wash, lay a dark, narrow line of bark fragments.

The air was very clear and crystalline. The light-houses on the ends of the twin piers, though some miles distant, seemed close at hand. White herring gulls, cruising against the blue, flashed white as the sails of a distant ship. A fresh breeze darkened the blue velvet surface of the water, tumbled the white foam hissing up the beach, blew forward over the dunes a fine hurrying mist of sand, and bore to Orde at last the refreshment of the wide spaces. A woman, walking slowly, bent her head against the force of this wind.

Orde watched her idly. She held to the better footing of the smooth sand, which made it necessary that she retreat often before the inrushing wash, sometimes rather hastily. Orde caught himself admiring the grace of her deft and sudden movements, and the sway of her willowy figure. Every few moments she turned and faced the lake, her head thrown back, the wind whipping her garments about her.

As she drew nearer, Orde tried in vain to catch sight of her face. She looked down, watching the waters advance and recede; she wore a brimmed hat bent around her head by means of some sort of veil tied over the top and beneath her chin. When she had arrived nearly opposite Orde she turned abruptly inland, and a moment later began laboriously to climb the steep sand.

The process seemed to amuse her. She turned her head sidewise to watch with interest the hurrying, tumbling little cascades that slid from her every step. From time to time she would raise her skirts daintily with the tips of her fingers, and lean far over in order to observe with interest how her feet sank to the ankles, and how the sand rushed from either side to fill in the depressions. The wind carried up to Orde low, joyous chuckles of delight, like those of a happy child.

As though directed by some unseen guide, her course veered more and more until it led directly to the spot where Orde stood. When she was within ten feet of him she at last raised her head so the young man could see something besides the top of her hat. Orde looked plump into her eyes.

"Hullo!" she said cheerfully and unsurprised, and sank down cross-legged at his feet.

Orde stood quite motionless, overcome by astonishment. Her face, its long oval framed in the bands of the gray veil and the down-turned brim of the hat, looked up smiling into his. The fresh air had deepened the colour beneath her skin and had blown loose stray locks of the fine shadow-filled hair. Her red lips, with the quaintly up-turned corners, smiled at him with a new frankness, and the black eyes—the eyes so black as to resemble spots—had lost their half-indolent reserve and brimmed over quite frankly with the joy of life. She scooped up a handful of the dry, clean sand from either side of her, raised it aloft, and let it trickle slowly between her fingers. The wind snatched at the sand and sprayed it away in a beautiful plume.

"Isn't this REAL fun?" she asked him.

"Why, Miss Bishop!" cried Orde, finding his voice. "What are you doing here?"

A faint shade of annoyance crossed her brow.

"Oh, I could ask the same of you; and then we'd talk about how surprised we are, world without end," said she. "The important thing is that here is sand to play in, and there is the Lake, and here are we, and the day is charmed, and it's good to be alive. Sit down and dig a hole! We've all the common days to explain things in."

Orde laughed and seated himself to face her. Without further talk, and quite gravely, they commenced to scoop out an excavation between them, piling the sand over themselves and on either side as was most convenient. As the hole grew deeper they had to lean over more and more. Their heads sometimes brushed ever so lightly, their hands perforce touched. Always the dry sand flowed from the edges partially to fill in the result their efforts. Faster and faster they scooped it out again. The excavation thus took on the shape of a funnel. Her cheeks glowed pink, her eyes shone like stars. Entirely was she absorbed in the task. At last a tiny commotion manifested itself in the bottom of the funnel. Impulsively she laid her hand on Orde's, to stop them. Fascinated, they watched. After incredible though lilliputian upheavals, at length appeared a tiny black insect, struggling against the rolling, overwhelming sands. With great care the girl scooped this newcomer out and set him on the level ground. She looked up happily at Orde, thrusting the loose hair from in front of her eyes.

"I was convinced we ought to dig a hole," said she gravely. "Now, let's go somewhere else."

She arose to her feet, shaking the sand free from her skirts.

"I think, through these woods," she decided. "Can we get back to town this way?"

Receiving Orde's assurance, she turned at once down the slope through the fringe of scrub spruces and junipers into the tall woods. Here the air fell still. She remarked on how warm it seemed, and began to untie from over her ears the narrow band of veil that held close her hat.

"Yes," replied Orde. "The lumber-jacks say that the woods are the poor man's overcoat."

She paused to savour this, her head on one side, her arms upraised to the knot.

"Oh, I like that!" said she, continuing her task. In a moment or so the veil hung free. She removed it and the hat, and swung them both from one finger, and threw back her head.

"Hear all the birds!" she said.

Softly she began to utter a cheeping noise between her lips and teeth, low and plaintive. At once the volume of bird-sounds about increased; the half-seen flashes became more frequent. A second later the twigs were alive with tiny warblers and creepers, flirting from branch to branch, with larger, more circumspect chewinks, catbirds, and finches hopping down from above, very silent, very grave. In the depths of the thickets the shyer hermit and olive thrushes and the oven birds revealed themselves ghost-like, or as sea-growths lift into a half visibility through translucent shadows the colour of themselves. All were very intent, very earnest, very interested, each after his own manner, in the comradeship of the featherhood he imagined to be uttering distressful cries. A few, like the chickadees, quivered their wings, opened their little mouths, fluttered down tiny but aggressive against the disaster. Others hopped here and there restlessly, uttering plaintive, low-toned cheeps. The shyest contented themselves by a discreet, silent, and distant sympathy. Three or four freebooting Jays, attracted not so much by the supposed calls for help as by curiosity, fluttered among the tops of the trees, uttering their harsh notes.

Finally, the girl ended her performance in a musical laugh.

"Run away, Brighteyes," she called. "It's all right; nobody's damaged."

She waved her hand. As though at a signal, the host she had evoked melted back into the shadows of the forest. Only the chickadee, impudent as ever, retreated scolding rather ostentatiously, and the jays, splendid in their ornate blue, screamed opinions at each other from the tops of trees.

"How would you like to be a bird?" she inquired.

"Hadn't thought," replied Orde.

"Don't you ever indulge in vain and idle speculations?" she inquired. "Never mind, don't answer. It's too much to expect of a man."

She set herself in idle motion down the slope, swinging the hat at the end of its veil, pausing to look or listen, humming a little melody between her closed lips, throwing her head back to breathe deep the warm air, revelling in the woods sounds and woods odours and woods life with entire self-abandonment. Orde followed her in silence. She seemed to be quite without responsibility in regard to him; and yet an occasional random remark thrown in his direction proved that he was not forgotten. Finally they emerged from the beach woods.

They faced an open rolling country. As far as the eye could reach were the old stumps of pine trees. Sometimes they stood in place, burned and scarred, but attesting mutely the abiding place of a spirit long since passed away. Sometimes they had been uprooted and dragged to mark the boundaries of fields, where they raised an abatis of twisted roots to the sky.

The girl stopped short as she came face to face with this open country. The inner uplift, that had lent to her aspect the wide-eyed, careless joy of a child, faded. In its place came a new and serious gravity. She turned on him troubled eyes.

"You do this," she accused him quite simply.

For answer he motioned to the left where below them lay a wide and cultivated countryside—farmhouses surrounded by elms; compact wood lots of hardwood; crops and orchards, all fair and pleasant across the bosom of a fertile nature.

"And this," said he. "That valley was once nothing but a pine forest—and so was all the southern part of the State, the peach belt and the farms. And for that matter Indiana, too, and all the other forest States right out to the prairies. Where would we be now, if we HADN'T done that?" he pointed across at the stump-covered hills.

Mischief had driven out the gravity from the girl's eyes. She had lowered her head slightly sidewise as though to conceal their expression from him.

"I was beginning to be afraid you'd say 'yes-indeed,'" said she.

Orde looked bewildered, then remembered the Incubus, and laughed.

"I haven't been very conversational," he acknowledged.

"Certainly NOT!" she said severely. "That would have been very disappointing. There has been nothing to say." She turned and waved her hat at the beech woods falling sombre against the lowering sun.

"Good-bye," she said gravely, "and pleasant dreams to you. I hope those very saucy little birds won't keep you awake." She looked up at Orde. "He was rather nice to us this afternoon," she explained, "and it's always well to be polite to them anyway." She gazed steadily at Orde for signs of amusement. He resolutely held his face sympathetic.

"Now I think we'll go home," said she.

They made their way between the stumps to the edge of the sand-hill overlooking the village. With one accord they stopped. The low-slanting sun cast across the vista a sleepy light of evening.

"How would you like to live in a place like that all your life?" asked Orde.

"I don't know." She weighed her words carefully. "It would depend. The place isn't of so much importance, it seems to me. It's the life one is called to. It's whether one finds her soul's realm or not that a place is liveable or not. I can imagine entering my kingdom at a railway water-tank," she said quaintly, "or missing it entirely in a big city."

Orde looked out over the raw little village with a new interest.

"Of course I can see how a man's work can lie in a small place," said he; "but a woman is different."

"Why is a woman different?" she challenged. "What is her 'work,' as you call it; and why shouldn't it, as well as a man's, lie in a small place? What is work—outside of drudgery—unless it is correspondence of one's abilities to one's task?"

"But the compensations—" began Orde vaguely.

"Compensations?" she cried. "What do you mean? Here are the woods and fields, the river, the lake, the birds, and the breezes. We'll check them off against the theatre and balls. Books can be had here as well as anywhere. As to people: in a large city you meet a great many, and they're all busy, and unless you make an especial and particular effort—which you're not likely to—you'll see them only casually and once in a great while. In a small place you know fewer people; but you know them intimately." She broke off with a half-laugh. "I'm from New York," she stated humorously, "and you've magicked me into an eloquent defense of Podunk!" She laughed up at Orde quite frankly. "Giant Strides!" she challenged suddenly. She turned off the edge of the sand-hill, and began to plunge down its slope, leaning far back, her arms extended, increasing as much as possible the length of each step. Orde followed at full speed. When the bottom was reached, he steadied her to a halt. She shook herself, straightened her hat, and wound the veil around it. Her whole aspect seemed to have changed with the descent into the conventionality of the village street. The old, gentle though capable and self-contained reserve had returned. She moved beside Orde with dignity.

"I came down with Jane and Mrs. Hubbard to see Mr. Hubbard off on the boat for Milwaukee last night," she told him. "Of course we had to wait over Sunday. Mrs. Hubbard and Jane had to see some relative or other; but I preferred to take a walk."

"Where are you staying?" asked Orde.

"At the Bennetts'. Do you know where it is?"

"Yes," replied Orde.

They said little more until the Bennetts' gate was reached. Orde declined to come in.

"Good-night," she said. "I want to thank you. You did not once act as though you thought I was silly or crazy. And you didn't try, as all the rest of them would, to act silly too. You couldn't have done it; and you didn't try. Oh, you may have felt it—I know!" She smiled one of her quaint and quizzical smiles. "But men aren't built for foolishness. They have to leave that to us. You've been very nice this afternoon; and it's helped a lot. I'm good for quite a long stretch now. Good-night."

She nodded to him and left him tongue-tied by the gate.

Orde, however, walked back to the hotel in a black rage with himself over what he termed his imbecility. As he remembered it, he had made just one consecutive speech that afternoon.

"Joe," said he to Newmark, at the hotel office, "what's the plural form of Incubus? I dimly remember it isn't 'busses.'"

"Incubi," answered Newmark.

"Thanks," said Orde gloomily.



XIII

"I have Heinzman's contract all drawn," said Newmark the next morning, "and I think I'll go around with you to the office."

At the appointed time they found the little German awaiting them, a rotund smile of false good-nature illuminating his rosy face. Orde introduced his partner. Newmark immediately took charge of the interview.

"I have executed here the contract, and the bonds secured by Mr. Orde's and my shares of stock in the new company," he explained. "It is only necessary that you affix your signature and summon the required witnesses."

Heinzman reached his hands for the papers, beaming over his glasses at the two young men.

As he read, however, his smile vanished, and he looked up sharply.

"Vat is this?" he inquired, a new crispness in his voice. "You tolt me," he accused Orde, "dot you were not brepared to break out the rollways. You tolt me you would egspect me to do that for myself."

"Certainly," agreed Orde.

"Vell, why do you put in this?" demanded Heinzman, reading from the paper in his hand. "'In case said rollways belonging to said parties of the second part are not broken out by the time the drive has reached them, and in case on demand said parties of the second part do refuse or do not exercise due diligence in breaking out said rollways, the said parties of the first part shall themselves break out said rollways, and the said parties of the second part do hereby agree to reimburse said parties of the first part at the rate of a dollar per thousand board feet.'"

"That is merely to protect ourselves," struck in Newmark.

"But," exploded Heinzman, his face purpling, "a dollar a tousand is absurd!"

"Of course it is," agreed Newmark. "We expect it to be. But also we expect you to break out your own rollways in time. It is intended as a penalty in case you don't."

"I vill not stand for such foolishness," pounded Heinzman on the arm of his chair.

"Very well," said Newmark crisply, reaching for the contract.

But Heinzman clung to it.

"It is absurd," he repeated in a milder tone. "See, I vill strike it out." He did so with a few dashes of the pen.

"We have no intention," stated Newmark with decision, "of giving you the chance to hang up our drive."

Heinzman caught his breath like a child about to cry out.

"So that is what you think!" he shouted at them. "That's the sort of men you think we are! I'll show you you cannot come into honest men's offices to insoolt them by such insinuations!" He tore the contract in pieces and threw it in the waste basket. "Get oudt of here!" he cried.

Newmark arose as dry and precise as ever. Orde was going red and white by turns, and his hands twitched.