Timber Part Two

 CHAPTER XIII

Windigo Lodge is a huge, rambling building of logs, high on a bluff overlooking the south branch of the Au Sable. Great chimneys of boulders flank the structure, a wide verandah runs about three sides, screened in and furnished in wicker, with those refinements which are not native to the plains country: luxurious swinging seats, lounges, winged rockers, tea wagons and flower baskets.

Inside is a great main hall. A fireplace fills one end, bright rugs are on the floor, a piano with its floor lamp is in one corner; there are shelves of books and wide window-seats; electric lights are about the walls and glow from beneath lampshades on tables, and from the center of the beamed ceiling hangs the massive root of a cedar tree, polished expertly and each of the two-score root prongs holds its small frosted light bulb.

A girl in riding breeches played the piano and three couples danced with abandon to the primitive measure. At the far end of the room a table of bridge occupied four others. Mrs. Mason, Dick's mother, read in a corner, unmindful of sounds or movement. Only one of the gay party was alone: Marcia Murray sat in a rocker on the verandah, tapping the concrete floor nervously with a small pump, staring with sullen eyes toward the river, where a firefly winked through the spruces.

It had been a difficult day for her, the culmination of weeks which had been beset with increasing perplexities. Soon after her return to Detroit from Florida she had dropped an occasional word to be carried by curious minds to meet other words that John Taylor had dropped, and it was not long before her best girl friends came to her with those hopeful kisses and smiles which are designed to provoke confidence.

But Marcia had made no actual response to their advances, because those perplexing factors had commenced to present themselves to her in John's letters before the gossips had gotten very far into her affairs, but she let it be known that there might be something to say—before very long. She knew that they were watching her at this house party as they had never had the opportunity of watching her before; they listened to her every word, remembered her every action, for the snaring of the heir to the Taylor millions was a matter of no small importance. To heighten this curiosity John had not appeared, though he was only forty miles away. At heart Marcia was worried and petulant and suspicious from the first day of her arrival, but she sparred alertly before the others, letting them know little, for her pride was as great—as some of her other qualities.

But her hope that he would spend this first Sunday with her had been too high for hiding. She had let them become aware that she expected him and when he did not come she knew that they detected her dismay, try as she did to cover it. After dinner she went to her room, begging a headache, and was aware that lifted eyebrows and a smirk or so and perhaps a cautious I-thought-as-much followed her. She opened a bag, took out John's letters and read them slowly, carefully, weighing words, reading again and again his references to the Foraker pine and to the girl who owned it. He was very enthusiastic over the forest—but of Helen he said little—much too little.

Marcia's cheeks became flushed and that cool calculation which was characteristic of her eyes gave way to temper. She was not nice to behold as she sat on the floor, reading those letters—after that she lay down, stretching her slim legs and throwing her arms wide, staring at the ceiling, thinking, thinking. She slept a few moments and moaned once or twice lightly. When she awakened, she opened her door and listened; it was quiet below; most of the others were gone. She went down and sat at a desk and wrote a lengthy letter, a bright, light charming letter, completed with much pains and deliberation and some rewriting.

The letter was for Philip Rowe.

She kept her front of gaiety very well thereafter until darkness when the others found agreeable diversion, but she did not care for cards or dancing and reading was out of the question, so she slipped outside and sat alone, watching the night, brooding, planning, with temper in her eyes again.

It was there Fan Huston found her. Fan was thirty, married at twenty-two, childless, given to tightly drawn hair nets, much rice powder, stiff gowns and personal difficulties. She went in for trouble as some women go in for surgery and some men for the collecting of stamps or obsolete firearms. She came to the door, saw Marcia, looked cautiously about to see that her husband was occupied with a girl in a yellow sweater and came swiftly across the verandah, drawing a chair to Marcia's.

The girl looked up with a casual word, but the turn of her head exposed her worried face to the revealing shaft of light. Fan said nothing for a moment, but took Marcia's hand in hers and squeezed it significantly. The music stopped, voices arose; then the piano thumped again and Fan Huston sighed as in relief and leaned forward.

"I understand, Marcia dear," she said lowly. The girl bit her lip and turned her face away and made as if to withdraw her hand, but Fan leaned nearer. "Now don't think I'm butting in! I understand, and there isn't a bit of use thinking that you can keep me from helping you! It's a shame, and I'm here to say so! If John Taylor had come over today I was prepared to take the first chance and give him a generous piece of my mind—and make him like it."

Her brittle voice vibrated indignation and that quality met a need in Marcia's heart. Taylor's growing indifference had given her the feel of a jilted woman; she had been helplessly furious at the serene interest these other women took in her misfortune. But she had not yet reached the point of storming against the shabby treatment John had given her, and that is the specific which brings relief to the feminine heart when everything else has failed.

"You know that you can trust me, dear," Fan was saying. "You've been very sweet through it all, but you couldn't keep it from Fanny! I know; I've been through it and I've helped others through it and I can't help telling you that you're going too far, taking too much from John! It's a downright shame that he should treat a girl like you this way, but you're a little goose to put up with it! You have the right of every woman to protect her pride, and if you don't exercise that right, he may—walk on you, dear!"

Marcia's hand, which had lain rather tentatively in Fan's, moved and its fingers twined with the older woman's. Fan lowered her voice and went on. Later they walked together, arm in arm, up and down the terrace before the house and Marcia cried a bit and steadied and grew indignant.

Before they went in they stood looking at the play of northern lights.

"You would do that?" Marcia asked in the pause.

"Positively I would! I wouldn't let a day go by. If there should be another girl—"

"Oh, there isn't! I'm sure he isn't interested in Miss Foraker!" There were limits to which Marcia could go even in that sympathetic company and her pride prompted that lie. "It's—it's just that he's so wrapped up in his business."

"Well, in either case," Fan was not quite convinced, it seemed, "the best way to bring him to time is to go there, have it out."

Marcia watched the bank of light on the horizon throw out a fresh fringe of pale green.

"Miss Foraker has asked me to come," she lied again. "I might—Yes, I think you're right. I could drive over—tomorrow—"

Fan patted her hands.

"That's the girl! Don't be too abrupt with him, but just have everything clearly understood. Of course, I know your feeling for John, but I can't help remarking, as Dr. Mason remarked to Dick yesterday when the big trout went through his tackle, 'there are several big ones left in the stream yet'—

"And if I were you, Marcia dear, I'd wear that blue sport suit—"

CHAPTER XIV

Milt Goddard returned from Pancake that night, bringing letters for Taylor.

Sitting on the deacon's bench in the men's shanty John opened them. One was from his father. The address was typewritten, but within was a scant page of Luke's scrawl. It had been years since the old man had touched pen to paper for his son and that fact was thrilling!

"You are crazy to talk of that much pine. It can't be done. Don't believe everything they tell you up there just because you're a gullible cub. I'm sending Rowe to Pancake Monday night just to see how big a fool you are. Your mother is well. Yours, etc. L. Taylor."

John breathed deeply and smiled and scratched his head and re-read the crabbed sentences. Beneath their crustiness was genuine interest, a willingness, after Luke's manner, to take him seriously at last, an indication that the favors he had asked two months before and which had drawn only a cruel trick now were his.

Yesterday he would have tried to calculate the profit that might accrue to him from Luke Taylor's aid; tonight he saw only in that note a promise that the burden on Helen Foraker's shoulders would be lightened. She had helped him, she had shaped him—she had taught him; and now, perhaps, he could repay some of that obligation.

He could not know what waited just over the horizon of time!

The other letter was in a smudged, scrawled envelope, addressed in pencil and posted from Pancake. He opened it absently. The message had been written on rough tablet paper. It read:

"John Taylor Sir Well are you going to settel or will i have to seu you My damages is not Grate but unless i am paid 1000$ I will law you out of the county Yrs respy. Chas Stump esq."

He frowned over this. Goddard came in and he showed it to him. Milt laughed in the superior manner he had adopted toward Taylor, but condescended to say:

"Miss Foraker has a stack of 'em a foot high. Everybody who comes here from outside or anybody who has any property here gets those from Charley. He'll be around to see you."

Taylor had not been at the mill an hour the next morning when Charley Stump appeared, pushing his safety, that guilty look in his watery eyes.

"Hello, Mr. Taylor," he said, halting at a distance.

"Hello, Charley."

"Fine weather, ain't it?"

"Right."

John was copying from a tally sheet and paid no more attention to the old man until he had finished. Then he turned and looked squarely at him. Charley's hand caressed the bent handle-bar and his old eyes shifted uneasily.

"Your logs is turnin' out good, Mr. Taylor?"

"Fairly well."

"That's fine. You like it here, Mr. Taylor?"

"You bet, Charley!"

"Well—that's good," falteringly, as though he had started to say something else.

"Was there something you wanted to say to me, Charley?"

"Oh, no; I just dropped by to see your logs. I'd been over sooner only I ain't got my tires yet," pointing at the rope-bound rims.

John walked away smiling. Charley was so meek and casual after his preemptory threat.

It was mid-afternoon when Helen, driving her Ford home from Pancake, saw a pea-green roadster attempt to swing into the road from one of the lesser trails which came in from the north. The car was driven by a girl and both car and driver were out of place there. The motor bellowed, the sand flew from the rear wheels, spinning tires ate through the sod hub-deep into the earth and stopped. Helen swung her car out of the road, ran around a stump, over a half-rotted log and stopped in the road again beyond the big car.

Marcia Murray was out, looking petulantly at the plight of her car when Helen came up.

"They call these roads!" she exclaimed. "All day long I've been wandering over these plains and trying to get right directions. How you people manage to get about is more than I understand."

Helen stooped to see better the position of the rear wheels.

"We drive light cars," she said simply. "And we get used to these roads." She looked at Marcia, immaculate, blonde, flushed, with fury in her eyes. "Where were you going?"

"To Pancake. How far is it from here?"

"About eleven miles."

"Are you sure?"

"No."

Marcia sniffed. "You're the first person I've met today who wasn't sure, so perhaps you are right"

Her haughty manner did not impress this girl in the khaki skirt and laced boots, Marcia perceived. She experienced misgiving as though this other disapproved of her and as though that disapproval mattered. She was not accustomed to being made uncomfortable by the opinions of strangers. The flush in her face mounted as she watched Helen, who had dropped to her knees to look under the stalled car.

"You're in deep, but I think I can get you out."

"You can get help?"

"I could, but it isn't necessary. Let me take a pull on your car."

"With that?" looking disdainfully at the rattle-trap roadster.

"Yes."

Helen went to her and came back with a shovel. She did not look at Marcia and said nothing and this further nettled the girl. She stood back, however, smoothing the skirt over her hips, and watched Helen shovel sand and turf from about the rear wheels. She did the work quickly and without any evident effort or awkwardness.

"There"—drawing off her gloves and shaking sand from them. "Now we'll try."

A rope was forthcoming from the box on her car. She backed in close and made it fast.

"Start your motor," she said. "I think the two of us can manage it."

The engine sputtered, the gear of the Ford whined, the slack came out of the rope, the big car bellowed, both sets of driving wheels tore at the earth and the heavy car crawled forward, following the smaller between stumps and around through the brakes until it was again in the road.

"You're not headed for Pancake now," Helen said when the motors stopped. "It's the other way, but you can turn around if you're careful not to cut through the sod."

"You'll let me pay for this, of course."

Marcia produced her purse, but Helen would not accept money, though Marcia was insistent.

"Well, it was very kind of you, anyhow. You'll take my thanks, won't you?

"Perhaps the person I am looking for is not just in Pancake; that is his address, but there's a mill somewhere near here?"

"Yes, on a little further."

"I'm looking for a Mr. Taylor. Do you know of him?"

Helen eyed Marcia with a new interest. "I'm working for Mr. Taylor and I am going to talk with him as soon as I get home. He will be at my house."

"Oh"—rather slowly. "How much further is that?"

"Not far. If you want to you can follow me—"

"That's very kind of you," icily.

Marcia was appraising this woman, now, as her identity seeped into understanding, and the personal inadequacy she had felt gave way to its sister emotion: resentment. It was with this girl John was working, it was to her he had referred with such significant repression in his letters. Marcia's flush came back as she followed the rattling Ford over the swells and into Foraker's Folly.

At the door of her own house Helen stopped and got down.

"I have some things to look after," she said. "Mr. Taylor is in there, or will be shortly. Won't you go in?"

Marcia's thanks was curt. She ran up the steps, breath quickening, and paused with her hand on the knob and watched Helen join Black Joe and move toward the nursery. Then she opened the door and stood looking in.

John was at Helen's desk, loose papers about him, lumber quotations clipped from a Detroit newspaper propped against a book, figuring on a pad of blank paper. He had heard the approach of Helen's noisy car; he had not heard the soft breathing of the big roadster, so when the door opened he believed it was Helen returning and did not look up at once, but only grunted an abstracted greeting. When no step sounded he raised his eyes.

For a moment he sat in motionless amazement, and then his pencil dropped to the blotter.

"Marcia!" he cried, and there was in the word a ring of gladness which was eloquent, as he beheld the trim girl, cool and clean and representative of all that had been desirable—a few short weeks before. "Marcia!" Amazement was there as he rose slowly, bewildered at seeing her there. He stopped about the corner of the desk, moved toward her and stopped. "Marcia?" A faltering question, reflecting all the doubt, a crystallizing of all the change that had come into his heart, a troubled echo of the truth that had come to him last night as he stood alone under the pines.

For a moment they were so, a dozen feet apart, the man's face a study in conflicts, the girl's intent, alert as it pried and probed with the incisiveness of her kind.

"John," she said lowly. "John?"

He moved forward and she put out both hands to him, her eyes questioning, before the calculation which flickered in their depths; he took her hands and halted. Just that: took her hands in his and stopped.

They stood, and he felt her tremble.

"John—aren't you going to—kiss me?" Her voice was exquisite pathos mingled with fright and misgiving, fright and misgiving which were well balanced; almost too well balanced.

He released one of her hands and his fell to his side limply.

"No, Marcia," shaking his head slowly. "I'm not—today."

She drew back then, a hand at her throat.

"John? John! You aren't glad to see me?" in a breathless whisper; and then, voice mounting, "John! What is it?"

He turned away, thrusting his hands into his pockets, staring gloomily through a window.

"A mistake," he muttered.

"Mistake?"

"Yes, a ghastly, miserable mistake!" he cried, facing her again, throwing his hands wide. "I'm at fault, Marcia. The blame in it rests on me. I've been selfish, indecisive. I've changed and said nothing to you about change. If you hadn't come here today I might have come to you with this—or I might have let matters drift—I don't know."

He swallowed drily and looked down at her. She seemed smaller than ever, seemed more lovely, more fragile than she ever had before; her blue eyes were wide with fright and her lips parted in bewilderment, and that bewilderment was genuine. His brows drew together with the pain of hurting her, but the change of weeks had come to this rushing conclusion and there could be no evasion, no more delay.

"I was honest enough with you in the beginning," he went on. "I'll ask that for myself: credit for being sincere. I was off my head about you, I was ready to promise anything to you, ready to do anything for you—and I was wrong."

His voice dropped and he let his hand which had been lifted drop, too.

"Wrong?" she asked. "Just where—? Just how?—" Her voice was a bit steadier, that amazement was going from her face; a glint of craft was there.

"In everything—from you to saw-logs!"

Her eyes narrowed, just perceptibly.

"And what have I done?" she asked, "What—to make this difference?" She was steeled, as though her question invited accusation.

He shook his head. "That's the devil of it: you've done nothing." She stirred, as in relief. "It's all on me, Marcia." He did not see the leap of triumph in her eyes or the settling of her mouth. "I—made love to you and promised many things—which I can't fulfill."

The girl stepped forward quickly.

"John, there's some terrible misunderstanding here," she said hurriedly, resting a hand on his arm. "You frighten me, but I know it's a misunderstanding!" She pressed a hand against her lips as though to crowd back a sob but her cool, clear eyes showed no such distress.

"You're miserable; you're making a mountain of—nothing. There has been some good reason for your—for what might seem to other people like your neglect of me, I know."

She waited a moment and when he did not look at her, shook his arm gently.

"Everything has been going so splendidly for you, dear! Your father can't keep his pride to himself. He tells everybody about you. He's ready to help you—the world is before you, John—

"Promises?" She laughed nervously. "The only promise you made me was happiness and that happiness is yours to give me—for the asking."

She paused, smiled wistfully, and Taylor looked down at her again.

"No, Marcia, I can't give you the happiness you want," he said evenly. A flicker of hostility showed in her eyes. "There's such a difference in the happiness that you wanted and the happiness—you see, I'm not the John Taylor I was when I left you," very earnestly. "I've changed in the things I want and respect and because of that I've changed in almost every thought and impulse. I couldn't help this change if I wanted to; I'm not trying to crawl out of a mighty uncomfortable position; I'm telling you facts.

"The John Taylor who came up here started to make a fortune for you, to give you happiness in the terms of possessions that you could see and touch. That isn't possible any more. I can't do that—even after I've promised to do it—I didn't come to Windigo yesterday because I knew that some such thing as this would have to be said, though I didn't admit it even to myself until last night—and I didn't want to hurt you—I've tried to hide from the fact that the next time we saw each other—I'd have to ask you to—cancel our contract—"

"I don't understand," she said coolly and drew back.

"I scarcely understand myself, Marcia. I don't want to make money. I would like to have money, but I've lost all interest in starting out to make a fortune as a first objective—"

"No one wants money; they want what it will buy."

"Not even that," shaking his head. "I—I'd like to do a little something for a lot of people. I'd like to be of a little service, I think. I'd like to put my mind and body and what little money I may be able to get from my father behind an idea which is going to count for many people—not just for me. I'd like to put in the best years of my life—just doing that."

"Go on; you're becoming interesting," with a tinge of irony.

"You see, I have my chance to do that in this forest, this pine. I've written you about it. You won't understand if I try to tell you all, but I'll say just this: it's an adventure in putting back into the hands of men the forests that men took away. I told you about Thad Parker's wife—you've seen this country. My father helped make the Jim Harrises and the Thad Parkers possible; he helped lay waste to this country and did nothing to put back what he had taken.

"I used to believe that my father's fortune was something for me to use. I never considered the fact that the devastation which made that fortune worked a hardship on any one else. I've come to understand that now, and I've come to think that maybe the job before me is to undo some of the damage my father did; to put back some of the things he took away. He wouldn't understand that, of course. It would make him furious. No matter; he won't have to know, but I'm going to ask him to help me do just that job. I won't put it in such terms, but I won't deceive him. I can't promise him any great profit; I can't even promise him his money back; I don't know, yet, how much I will need, but I want him to take a chance with me and I think he will. He is sending Phil Rowe to Pancake to look It up and he'll be here tonight—"

"And what has this to do with me?" There was defiance in the movement of Marcia's head and John looked at her rather startled by her evident wrath.

"Only this—that I can't offer you anything of what you want."

"And what else?" she waited. "That I'm—no longer satisfactory?"

"Please don't put it that way," he begged. His voice trembled and his face was drawn with suffering, because he hurt her. "We wouldn't have anything in common, Marcia; I couldn't give you what you wanted—and with you unhappy, where would I find happiness? It would be wretched for both of us. Don't you see that?"

"Yes, I see," she said and laughed again. She drew off her gloves nervously, with anger showing in the sharp little jerks of her hands. "You've changed, yes! And because you've changed, you assume the right to make me ridiculous in the eyes of my friends, to humiliate me, to delude and deceive me and make me suffer."

"Oh, Marcia—"

"You're not dumb, John Taylor! This isn't any sudden change in you; there's nothing spontaneous about it; it's deliberate and planned and I am—the deluded virgin!"

He tried to interrupt, but she stormed on, voice unsteady. "That is what it amounts to! You made love to me furiously; you were extravagant in your promises. I believed and promised to be your wife—you have it in your power to make good these promises, but you have forgotten that I and others may think that you owe something to me regardless of—this change in you! Wait a minute! I'm not through!" Taylor dropped his hands limply and listened. "All my closest friends, all your best friends, those who know the most about us, those who had our confidence, knew that I had given my word to marry you. They talk about you and gush over the way you have developed, when all they want to know is why you've changed in your attitude toward me—the cats! They held up all their plans yesterday to see if you would come, and when you didn't they tried to say that they were sorry, when I knew that they felt that it served me right for trusting you at all.

"There's another thing: How it affects me, here," a hand on her breast. "I put my trust in you; you made a solemn compact and now, on a whim, you ditch me—because you don't want to make money! Because you want to become a sort of evangelist, you begin by trampling a girl's heart and making her a laughing stock. Have you no pride, John Taylor? Have you no shame?"

Her questions stung like the bite of a leash. He could not know what went on in her cool little mind, could not know the meanness of her own heart at that moment. For him, who believed he had known women, Marcia had been worthy of his trust; for him she had been sweet and gentle, honest and without guile. He could not know of the nights she had been with Phil Howe, playing him, holding him at once aloof and her prisoner; he could not guess the tensity and intelligence with which she had followed the varying favor of old Luke. He could not know the secret plans she had made in heartlessness and mercenary calculation, the deceptions she had practiced, could not know the scorn she had for the first manhood and idealism that ventured into his letters. But this he could see and know—that instead of hurting this girl he had stirred a terrible temper; that instead of crying out to him in suffering she talked to him of her position, of what he could do for her if he would! Pride? Shame? Had he neither?

"I have pride, Marcia; I have shame. I have too much pride to lie to myself, to go through with this bargain which was to have meant much happiness. Now—I could never bring you happiness. It is better to see failure ahead than to walk blindly into it. By foresight—there is perhaps chance of another start. Shame? Yes, I have shame! The only greater shame that could come to me would come if I dodged this thing today—and went through with something infamous." He moved forward, not just steadily, and towered over her, looking into her face with a scrutiny which would not be evaded. One of his hands worked slowly as though he clutched for some saving condition. For a breathless moment they stood silent, giving one another stare for stare.

"I have changed and you have changed, Marcia. I—I never thought you had claws! I was prepared to break your heart today—and pay the penalty to my own conscience, all because of my mistake. I paid that penalty here in this room only a moment ago. I suffered as I never thought a man could suffer, because I was acting the cad, because I thought I was—hurting you. There's one thing I want to ask you, and I want you to be as honest with me as I have been with you. If I had come to Windigo yesterday, if I had told you that I could never bring fortune, if I had asked you to keep your promise under those circumstances, would you have taken me?"

She did not answer. She tried to tear her eyes away from his, tried to move, but she was helpless in the grip of his earnestness. A door opened and Helen Foraker stepped into the room, saw them and halted in surprise.

"Please excuse me," she begged. "I heard no one and thought you had gone out."

She started to withdraw, but Marcia checked her.

"Don't go," she said and laughed. She began drawing on a glove, covering the white, well shaped, well tended hands. "There isn't place for two of us here, it seems. I'm going—to make room for you, Miss Foraker."

She drew back and her eyes ran the length of Taylor's body, resting on his face with a blaze of fury. Her lip curled over her even teeth as she said: "This, I suppose, may be the ending of the first lesson!"

She turned toward the door.

"Wait!" he said sharply, and caught her wrist, swinging her about to face him.

"You haven't answered me—under those conditions, what would you have said?"

As she shook off his clasp she smiled again and her chin went up. "What would I have said?" She laughed, with the laugh of a victor. "Why, you poor fool, I'd have laughed in your face!"

The screen door banged behind her. As she jumped to the seat of the roadster he stood looking after her, arms limp at his side, breath quick. The motor started, the car backed and swung and with a bellow as of contemptuous rage it struck into the road which led out of the forest.

John turned slowly toward the doorway in which Helen had appeared. She was gone, the door closed. He stared blankly at it.

"Fooled!" he muttered. "So—I was the dupe! It wasn't the man—but what he could give!" He put a hand over his eyes and laughed weakly. "And I humbled myself—I crawled on my belly—but, by God!" hand dropping from his eyes, "I went through with it! I didn't hedge!"

He stared again at the closed door through which Helen had come to see and hear and through which she had gone again. He stepped forward, a half dozen quick strides.

"Helen!" he cried—"Helen!"—and stopped and waited. No reply, and he breathed again. "No—not now," he said. "Lord, no! Not now—not the chance of another mistake!"

CHAPTER XV

The anger which had been in Marcia's face died long before she crossed Seven Mile Creek. She became a trifle pale, a little drawn of feature, as though she had been through an ordeal, as if she had bid high on a long chance and lost. But her eyes, though fast on the road, showed a degree of speculation that does not come often to the blue eyes of a golden-haired girl; they were not hopeless or dismayed, and when she reached the place where she had been stalled she did not turn into the road that would take her back to Windigo Lodge, but kept right on to Pancake, stopped her car at the Commercial House where she registered and was given a room, and from there she telephoned to Mrs. Mason, at Windigo.

"This is Marcia," she said gaily. "John won't let me come back tonight, so I'm going to stay over—yes, he's awfully busy—yes, I'm with Miss Foraker—delightful—see you all tomorrow—"

She hung up the receiver and stepped out of the booth, her mouth set.

"What time is the train from the south due?" she asked Henry.

"Nine-ten," he replied.

"That is the only one today?"

"Only one since noon."

The early June moon hung over Pancake as the night train slid to a stop, glorifying the ugly little town, softening the bad lines of its flimsy buildings, toning down the colors with which they were painted, mellowing the nakedness of others. The night was very still and warm, and sweet with the purity of distances.

The river murmured to the village as it slid by and people sitting on their stoops talked back and forth, their voices carrying well in the night air. Philip Rowe came across the street beside Henry who had gone to the train to guide stray travelers to his shelter, and Marcia, from the hotel verandah, watched him come, rocking gently in the rickety chair, her cool smile hidden by the shadows.

She remained there while he registered and went to his room, waiting patiently, because the rooms were stuffy and she knew he would return. He came out of the door and stopped to light a cigar. She could see his frown in the glare of the match; she saw, too, the look of amazement when she spoke. He stared toward her incredulously and did not move until the match burned out. Then she laughed.

He came with quick steps and leaned over her chair. "Marcia Murray!"

"Why so dramatic?" She laughed as she let her hand rest in his.

"Of all places to find you!"

"You knew I was at Dick Mason's."

"But that's a long way from here!"

"Love," she said mockingly, "laughs at locksmiths and bad roads."

His hand tightened on hers till she winced.

"Oh, not that, Phil! You're so eager and impulsive—and such an optimist. I had no idea you were coming, though I believe John did mention it."

He dropped her hand and leaned against the railing.

"You were over here to see him," he said flatly.

Her clear laugh came again. "Of course, who else would I come to see? Though naturally, I'm glad that you are here tonight. I had planned a lonely evening. John doesn't know that I got off the road and missed my way until late. I was with him all day and he thinks I'm safe at Windigo. I would only worry him if I let him know."

Rowe pulled at his cigar.

"He's so busy! You'll hardly know him, Phil; he's quite changed."

"I expect so," drily. Pause.

"Why don't we walk?" Rowe asked. "I've ridden all—"

"Fine! Such a night!"

They went together, slowly, out along the board sidewalk to where it became but two planks laid side by side in the sand, and finally off that into the road itself.

"Don't you think John is doing wonderfully," Marcia asked.

Rowe shrugged and threw away his cigar rather impetuously, as though it had not pleased his taste. "He's doing something, yes, but the old man can't trust him. He's a kid in business; been lucky, but he has a deal on and Luke won't trust him to go it alone; that's why I am here."

Marcia lowered her face and he would have been startled had he seen its intentness. "But I thought his father was greatly pleased with what he had done?"

"Oh, in a way," grudgingly. "He doesn't trust him like he does me." There was something like a childish boast in the last.

"Then he hasn't overcome his father's prejudice?"

"No!" explosively.

"But if he should show big things?"

"He has to do that yet!"

"Don't you think this new idealism he's developing will appeal to his father? Or—mightn't he like it?"

Rowe glanced sideways at her; her face was still in the shadow.

"Just what do you mean—idealism?"

"Why his putting ideals above money. He came up here to make money and he has done that, has proven that he is capable of making it. He's seemed to outgrow that ambition, though I think it's splendid the way he wants to help Miss Foraker."

Rowe's fingers touched his chin speculatively.

"That's news to me," he said. "I came up to find out about this pine deal and what backing he wants."

Marcia looked up in a good counterfeit of surprise.

"Am I betraying a secret? I didn't mean to, really!"

"No secret. I'll know in the morning."

He urged gently for more information, but Marcia held it back long enough to whet his curiosity.

"Why, it's simply a matter of ideals," she finally said. "His father, you see, made his fortune by cutting pine. Now John has been convinced by Miss Foraker that timber can be grown as a crop. He wants to see some of that fortune made out of old pine devoted to growing young pine—and undo some of the damage his father did to this country. He thinks his father owes something to—to the country; only, of course, he won't put it that way to Mr. Taylor. It's a conservation hobby—reforestation."

After a moment Rowe laughed: "Growing trees to look at, eh?"

"Well, for a time. He isn't sure that it will pay—it isn't profit he is after, anyhow."

Rowe was silent.

"A big idea isn't it?" she asked.

"Not for profit, eh?"

"Really Phil, I don't know detail. It's all very big and splendid. It dates away ahead for future generations. I tell him I don't think his father will take to the idea very readily. Do you? John, though, is all enthusiasm for it—"

Another period of silence; then from Rowe: "Are you sure of this?"

"Sure? Of course! He talked it all the afternoon."

His hand sought her arm and rested there none too lightly.

"And what do you think?" he asked. "What do you think Luke Taylor would say to putting his money into something for—coming generations—paying for what he's broke?"

"It doesn't sound much like him, does it?"

Rowe laughed harshly.

"I guess not! I guess not! He's had me jumping for months switching his investments so they're as good as cash! A bird in hand is worth a half dozen in the bush to him—"

He stopped and swung her about so that her face was toward the moon.

"Don't you know what this means? Don't you know what Luke will say?"

"Why—what, Phil?" breathlessly.

"You're right that John has caught the old man's interest. He has made a showing that tickled the old dog, but I knew that he wouldn't go far! I knew he'd make some fool break and have to be satisfied with being a rich man's son in the flesh—and not before the courts—when Luke dies."

"Phil!"

"Listen, Marcia! A new will is ready to be drawn. John is cut off with an annuity—about enough to keep a teamster and his wife in want. I'm to be named as administrator. I'm to control the Luke Taylor millions! It's a big job; it'll be a fat job!"

He had both her arms in his hands then, gripping their firm flesh. She drew back, alarm in her face—all but the eyes, which were steady and cool and calculating

"I used to think he was simply shiftless. I never imagined he was a nut! Do you want to marry a man and live on ideals? Do you want to tie yourself to a worthless kid or an improvident dreamer? Do you want to do that?"

"Phil, what are you saying—"

"I'm saying this," he muttered fiercely, bending close to her. "I'm saying that is it Phil Rowe and not John Taylor who will be able to give you the things you want? Oh, don't deny it! I know you, Marcia, your impulses, your desires! I know that a man must bid high for your love. I know you want not comfort but luxury, not position but independence.

"Until now I haven't figured with you much. Until now I've been Luke Taylor's bookkeeper, but I've been a good bookkeeper—I've gotten closer to him than his son ever did, than his son ever can now. I'll have a chunk of the estate for my—loyalty," with fine irony. "That means that it's the bookkeeper, not the son, who can make you contented and happy!"

"Phil, you're trying to buy me!"

"Buy you? Yes!" as he dragged her to him and slid one arm about her shoulders. She struggled—very briefly—and then stood quiet, stilling the quaking of her limbs, as he talked into her hair, mingling kisses with words. "All women who are worth while are bought! Do you think I'd want you if you were cheap? Do you think I'd want a woman who would be content to grub and slave?

"Luke will explode when he hears what's brought me here! Paying for what he broke! That's good! John will be cut off—I'll be as good as the old man's heir. And that means—that means you—for me!"

She struggled again when his hand pried her chin upward, but she did not struggle when his burning lips lay on her mouth—and after a moment hers responded to that caress. And then she was free, panting, smoothing her hair.

"What are you saying? What are you doing? Why should I let you?" But her eyes reflected no question and a wicked little flare of triumph ran across her features.

"Because I love you! Because you will love me!" he cried.

"Don't be too sure, Phil," but her voice was without the power of dissuasion. "We must go back now—don't Phil—you're hurting me!"

At the door of her room he stopped. A lonesome soiled incandescent burned in the red carpeted hall, but it was enough to show him the fire in her eyes, to reveal the tempting curve of her lips as she smiled—tempting to distraction. Her hand was on the knob, the door was opening. He lurched forward, all assurance and desire—

She put up her hand quickly and laughed brittily.

"Marcia!" There was determination with the pleading in that word.

"No, Phil—tonight, I only—admire you—just that, Phil Rowe. No more—tonight—"

The door closed between them.

Out in the men's shanty in Foraker's Folly a man lay flat on his back, staring up into the darkness.

John Taylor had been wrong so many times. He had been wrong in everything these last weeks—from saw logs to Marcia Murray! He stirred restlessly. He had thought he understood women, as he had thought he understood himself; had believed that Marcia was sweet and kind and gentle. Today he had seen her claws, had felt them tearing at his pride. He had humbled himself before her because he had been wrong and had believed it the honorable way—but his mistake had been two-fold. He had loved her, but love had not brought her into his arms. The impelling influence was the hope of possessions, the lure of his father's fortune, not the call of his own young heart.

"Mistakes! Mistakes!" His lips formed the soundless words. Well, there would be no more mistakes he promised himself, and stirred again. He was free from clouded thinking, his eyes were open. He had been deceived by his own inconsequential self, by life, by a girl, but from now on—

Of such is the resilient assurance of youth!

And at a window in the big house Helen Foraker sat on the floor looking into the summer night, ears closed to the music of the river and the talk of her pine trees. Words echoed in those ears, the words of that other girl, spoken that afternoon.

"I am going—to make way for you, Miss Foraker!" Bitter, stinging words, but they did not sting the memory. They stirred some remote thing in her heart, touched some hope, some impulse of which she had never until today been aware.

He had come as a little boy, he had changed, had grown up, and now another woman had made way for her. She raised her hands and looked at them in the dim light as though they were strange objects. They were strong and splendidly proportioned, but they were a bit rough, a bit red.

"Hers," she whispered, "were so small—so white—" She looked up quickly, lips parted, as though her words and what they indicated had frightened her.

CHAPTER XVI

For hours Philip Rowe lay wakeful in the lumpy bed in the Commercial House, first tossing in a fever of desire, later lying quietly while his mind spun.

Marcia Murray had played her hand well, superbly well for a losing hand. She had made the most of what John Taylor had told her, of what she knew of his father's character, and of how Rowe reacted to the news she let him worm from her.

For years Philip Rowe had bent his sharp wits toward gaining a place between the Taylors, father and son. Like young John he had wanted fortune, but he was not afraid to grub. He had been faithful to Luke, more faithful to himself; he had studied, he had learned, he had watched and waited. On that morning in Detroit when he took notes for the framing of a new will, he believed he had triumphed, but the arrival of the letter from John telling that he had turned his father's shabby trick to profit knocked the foundation from beneath his hopes—for a time. He did not give up, though for another it would have been difficult to keep hope alive before old Luke's delight over the change in his boy.

The new will was not drawn, but Rowe knew that behind Luke's reaction to John's success there was persistent skepticism. With the coming of John's letters, asking for backing in this vaguely defined new scheme, that skepticism challenged paternal favor. Rowe understood, Rowe watched closer than ever. He was sent to Pancake to investigate with the knife of his self-seeking unsheathed, ready to strike at the first weakness Taylor might show.

And now it was so easy! Marcia had given him the best reason for hope that he had encountered in weeks. John Taylor, wanting to use his father's money for the gain of unborn generations! He smiled as he lay there. He would see Luke's face darken, could hear his stinging outburst.

Again his mind went back to Marcia. All winter she had toyed with him clandestinely in Florida. In Detroit he had seen much of her and the flirtation had been brisk—and tonight for the first time she had surrendered her lips and after she had given to him the information which seemed to open the way to an attainment of his dreams.

He sat up abruptly and stared out the window.

Had that been conscious? Had she realized, as he realized, the possibilities of this change in John's ambition? He drew a hand slowly through his hair and laughed quietly.

"You devil!" he whispered and laughed again, as if he had been fooled, and admired the wit that fooled him.

As surely as two ships in a motionless sea move toward one another, just that certainly will like personalities drift toward their kind. Rogue finds rascal; male flapper unerringly meets his congenial companion; intelligence discovers intelligence.

Marcia Murray had gone by the time Rowe awakened and Jim Harris was alone in the dining room when Phil entered. The men spoke gravely across the soiled linen, and Jim rattled his paper and remarked casually on the headlines as he would to any stranger. But two hours later they stood in Harris' room, looking down into the street where Helen stopped her noisy car to let John Taylor out, and Harris looked at Rowe and winked as he might have winked at a companion of years.

"Quite a gal, what?" he chuckled. "And maybe that explains a lot, Rowe."

The other's lips twitched in a sardonic smile, and though he said nothing it was evident that he understood.

Taylor did not look at the hotel register, for Henry Wales was at the desk, struggling over one of his pale, inflammable cigars, else he would have seen the fine signatures "M. Murray, Detroit." That might have added to the trouble that lurked in his eyes, aftermath of yesterday's scene; or, to have linked her name with Rowe's might have been relief. No matter. John did not seek information from the register, but asked his question of Henry, who said that Mr. Rowe got in last night; was upstairs now. "This's him, " as steps sounded on the stairs.

Rowe and Harris came down together and the former suavely greeted John, assured and superior.

"You know Mr. Harris, of course."

Yes, Taylor knew Harris, and as he acknowledged the acquaintance he looked from one to the other, sensing something of their kinship, but reading no import there—not then.

Harris went out. Taylor and Rowe went into the small and hideous parlor of the hotel. They smoked. They talked briskly of Luke and John's mother, of the lumber market, of the season, Rowe waiting like a cat at a mousehole, Taylor uneasy. Face to face with his father's secretary he was impressed with a lack of sympathy for his new enthusiasm and he dreaded getting at the matter which had brought Rowe north.

Suddenly Rowe precipitated the subject: "I've been with your father over seven years, Taylor. I never saw him quite so worked up as he was over your last letter."

"I thought it must have interested him, sending you up here. " John shifted uneasily in his chair.

"Michigan pine is to him—not like red to a bull; like freedom to a Bolshevist, perhaps."

Taylor smiled. 'He's always lived in the past, with the pine, Rowe. I thought of that: that it might give him a chance to live in the future."

"Or to live in the present? That would be better. Your father can't have very many years left." Pause.

"When your letter came in, mentioning Michigan white pine in a big tract, he forgot his cane. He walked up and down the room without it—for the first time in years."

"That's fine!"

"He rushed me up here, not because he wouldn't take your word"—with a cautious glance at John, "but because he wants you to speed up the deal. He'll go in with you, if the values can be established; he wants camps operating this fall."

John started.

"Camps?"

"Surely. He knows he hasn't much time left. It's been his dream—to finish as he began: cutting Michigan pine; a dream without foundation until now."

Taylor shook his head.

"It's not a question of buying and logging," he said.

Rowe paused in the act of striking a match.

"You don't want to buy?" he asked incredulously.

"It couldn't be bought, in the first place; and it isn't ready for harvest yet—you see, Rowe—"

He sat forward and for half an hour talked of Foraker's Folly, of the country adjacent, of what it had been, of what it was now; talked of Thad Parker and his wife's death. He did not mention Jim Harris; some undefined warning checked the bitter sentence at his teeth and he went on from Michigan pine plains to lumber markets and supply—He was careful to explain clearly, to make no over-statement. He went into the history of Helen's forest, told what he knew of the forest practice thereof, of the fire prevention, of the thinnings, the income and the future plans.

"I see," said Rowe when he had finished, and looked through the window with a malignant twinkle in his black eyes. "It's a case of—of taking some of the money that was made from Michigan pine to grow more Michigan pine."

"Exactly!"

"And—perhaps making some of that fortune perform a duty which most men wouldn't recognize: putting it to work to help pay for some of the ruin it made of this country?"

"You get the idea, Rowe!" Taylor burst out enthusiastically, and stopped shortly. He did not like the straightening of the other's arm in its coat sleeve as Rowe raised his cigar to his lips. It smacked of a gesture of triumph and Rowe continued staring through the window.

Before John could say more Rowe asked: "And how much help will you need?"

"I don't know."

"You haven't anything to go on, then?" as if disappointed.

"Not yet. You see, Miss Foraker needs help very badly, I think. I—I didn't want to hold out any false hopes to her. I wanted to be sure before I mentioned it."

"I see—" Once more the gleam of triumph came into his eye. "Have you had it estimated?"

"No. I've gone on the opinion of others."

"Your father wired Tolman, his old cruiser, to meet me here. He should be up from Saginaw today. It won't take him long to give us something definite and dependable."

"The value's there, all right," John said. "Tolman's report should satisfy father. I suppose he'll want that first."

He had risen.

"Surely," said Rowe, lightly enough. "A matter of a few days—and it won't take him long to make up his mind when he hears the facts," with a light sniff.

"You'll stay on, then?"

"I think not. I'll get out as soon as Tolman gets in, which'll probably be tonight."

They halted on the steps of the hotel.

"I don't suppose, then, there's any chance of buying?" Rowe asked.

"Not one in the world!"

"But if this Miss—Miss Foraker needs help so badly, I should think—"

"You don't know her! She'd lose everything before she'd listen to talk of selling!"

"And you wouldn't try to influence her?"

John shook his head emphatically.

"Buying is out of the question, Phil. That's one reason I want to help her—so no man can ever come in and take advantage of her circumstances, force a sale and ruin this plan."

"She's converted you to her idea all right!"

"By Jove, Rowe, she has that! I'd as soon lose my right arm as see that stuff cut now."

"You inspire me!"

They parted and Rowe went inside to stand by the window watching John swing along the sidewalk.

"Your right arm, eh? Well—by making that crack—about your right arm, you may lose your birthright."

He examined the time table hanging beside the desk and then entered the telephone booth. His call was for Miss Marcia Murray, at Windigo Lodge.

That afternoon Jim Harris and Philip Rowe drove north from Pancake. They did not stop at the Harris development project, though they left the main road there. They went on, along a seldom used trail, coming eventually to the southwest corner of Foraker's Folly. They left the car and crossed the fire line and within the shelter of the ranks of pine trees Rowe took a small camera from his pocket. They walked three miles or more through the forest, stopping now and then where the light and perspective were right to preserve for the discontented eyes of Luke Taylor the things which theirs could see.

They were together that night at supper, together when the nine-ten arrived, bringing the small, silent Tolman, turkey slung over his shoulder. They sat together a half hour later on the baggage truck on the station platform, waiting for the down-bound train.

"It's good," said Harris, rolling his cigar with satisfaction, "to have somebody I can talk to without doing a lot of rattling around and side-stepping. I can help you, Rowe, and I'd sure welcome some other substantial interests to this country."

"I think they're on their way," said his companion.

Harris nodded emphatically.

"I think so, too. I hope so—And I'll work to realize that hope. Anyhow, we've got a common interest. I've been a good servant for Pontiac Power and they've given me my chance with a big piece of this development proposition, but, damn it all, they expect me to do all their dirty work up here without any backing. I've protected their interests all right and I've made some money for myself, but I want to make a lot of money, Rowe—a lot of it. I need roads and schools to build up that project; I'm going to have 'em, too—an' when she sees her tax bill—that's going to help you! She won't be able to stand the racket—she won't be able to get her breath when I get through with her."

He laughed good naturedly.

"And she's alone? She hasn't any backing?"

"Not any that's worth a damn except—" He turned his head to look up First Street to where a light showed above the office of the Banner; he flicked the ash from his cigar and cleared his throat. "Just one old anarchist, Hump Bryant."

"The senator?"

"Yup," sourly. "Course he and I ain't clashed yet, but it's bound to come. He commenced stirrin' up a dust about timber taxes a few years ago. That was all right; he couldn't get anywhere and I wouldn't have kicked on that, anyhow. But now he's spreadin' out and 's asking too damn many questions about farms that are started and abandoned on these light lands. He wants to start some nutty land reform movement. We'll mix, yet. He's treading mighty close to my bunions. And he's lined up with the gal, all right. He's her port when it blows uncomfortable hard."

In the far distance the down train whistled and Rowe stood up, shaking his coat.

"About this other, though? This matter of taxes? You think you're safe there? You've got the supervisors thinking your way?"

Harris brushed ashes from his breast and laughed.

"Thinkin'? Hell, Rowe, these yaps haven't got anything to think with. But as for havin' them—" He thrust out one hand and held it close to the other's face, fist clenched. "Like that!" he said beneath his breath.

In other places in Pancake that night Helen Foraker was in the minds of men. In the bank of Pancake, for one, where Ezam Grainger sat at his desk, securities spread before him, going through the papers, making neat notes. His tight little face was harried and the stiff, straight collar slightly wilted from the moisture of his wrinkled neck, and now and then he muttered to himself.

From the stack of mortgages he took the next document. It was a paper covering title to three sections of Foraker's Folly: it was for $20,000. It was due, he saw, within three weeks. And when he put it down he checked it on a list before him and wrote beside it the one word: "Renew."

The door opened and Doctor Pelly came in. Ezam frowned over his glasses to identify the newcomer, then started up eagerly and opened the gate in the office railing.

"You've been to the house, doctor?" he asked nervously.

The physician shoved back his derby wearily and took a morsel of chewing tobacco from a pocket of his unbuttoned vest, winking roguishly, and apparently unmindful of Ezam's agitation.

"Better 'n Blaud's, Ezam," he said, taking a chair and stretching out his dusty shoes with a sigh. "Yeah, I've been over to see Lily."

Grainger fidgeted in his chair. His eyes showed, with their eagerness, a rare timidity.

"You two are all het up over nothing," Pelly said, and the other stiffened as though the pronouncement were an affront. "If I was a young doctor and not a friend, I'd welcome patients like your wife, Ezam. They've given many a young cub his start; nothin' better in the way of practice than a nervous woman with plenty of money. Nothing you can do for 'em, so there's no danger of their gettin' well. Only way you can lose 'em is to fail to take 'em seriously."

He winked again and the banker cleared his throat.

"Why in Sam Hill don't you an' Lily light out of here?" Pelly asked bluntly. "You can do more for her than I can, Ezam. You and your car and a part of your income spent liberal like."

Grainger settled back in his chair, reassured by the confidence in the doctor's tone.

"You've been here since the hills were hollows. You've made your pile. What's the idea of keepin' on?"

"Why—why, a man must keep busy."

Pelly negotiated the cuspidor safely.

"Busy, hell! You've been busy enough to last three or four lifetimes. The trouble with Lily is she ain't been busy enough. If—if there'd been more children there wouldn't 've been this trouble; if you'd call it a job and pulled out half a dozen years ago you wouldn't 've been in this stew."

He took off his derby and mussed his thin hair.

"You know, Ezam," crossing his knees, "Lily wasn't cut out for Pancake. It was all right for a while, but now it's used up her interest and 's after her nerve. Shucks! You're going to dry up and blow away in some hot wind yourself if you don't play a little! Sell your toy bank or give it away or somethin'! You've made your pile; you can play the rest of your life and never think twice about a new pair of shoes if prices never go down! Put Lily in your car, set fire to the house, light out for Maine for the summer, do New York in the fall and see the boy, drop over to California for the winter and maybe give Honolulu the once-over in the spring. Come back and look in on us in the summer for a few weeks; on your way again!"

He waved his hand elaborately. "Simple as skinnin' a cat!"

"You don't understand, doctor. It's—"

"Course I understand! You're in a rut and think th' world depends on your runnin' the bank of Pancake. Lily's in a rut, too, and Pancake's holdin' her in it. Don't try to tell me there's anything to hold you here but a habit. You know, Ezam, if I was fixed like you are, now—" He scratched his head fiercely and spit again and winked and ambled on, telling of how he would play, given the opportunity.

The down train stopped and went on. Jim Harris tapped on the window and waved his hand and passed. Talk within lagged.

"Tim Burdick's wife 's due for another kid or so tonight," Pelly said rising. "Got to get along." He buttoned his vest.

"Maybe there's something in what you say," Ezam admitted. "Our own affairs always seem large—and Lily—is all I have, now—she and the bank—"

He looked through the window and saw Harris mount the steps of the Commercial House.

"Widdemer, the new vice-president of Pontiac Power, was in from Bay City the other day. He'd be interested to buy, I think."

Pelly looked sharply at him.

"That so? He made an offer?"

"Well, not exactly, he wanted me to make one."

"That's reasonable. You do it, Ezam. There's nothing wrong with Lily now, but women are funny machines. She's all you've got—if she was mine—well, I'd want to give her a chance." He was grave then and gave his head a serious twist.

"Pontiac Power wants the bank, eh?" the doctor muttered. "Well, they're all right so far as I know, but between you and me and the rest of the town, Ezam, Harris don't wear very well." He shrugged. "I'd hate to think of Thad Parker's wife if I was him—and a lot of other men and women. Hear anything about his new road proposition?"

The banker nodded.

"He wants it—bad."

"He'll get it, then."

"He always has."

"And Foraker's Folly is going to hold the bag?"

"Oh, I don't think he could work that, but maybe he'll make Helen trouble. Humphrey thinks so. He's feeling the supervisors out, I'm told."

The doctor's mouth shut grimly.

"Yes, Hump is getting busy. Bless his old hide"

"Well, most everybody has trouble," he remarked. "Wish everybody had as easy a way out as you have, Ezam. Night. Have another voter for Pontiac Power by morning, I expect."

The door closed. Ezam went slowly back to his desk and sat there, stiff and prim on the chair, but his eyes dreamed.

And across the way in his rooms above the office of the Banner, Humphrey Bryant rocked in a chair that lurched sideways each time he swayed forward. His shoes were off, spectacles pushed back on his head. The windows were open and he sat alone, looking out to where the lights of the Commercial House and the unusual gleam from the bank windows threw beams across the white dust of the street.

On the opposite side of the window was another chair, which he had drawn from its accustomed corner before he sat down; a wooden rocker, stuffed with calico pillows and draped with the same limp material. It had been in that corner ever since the old man had begun living alone, when Maggie Bryant gave up and was taken out to the plot of barren ground on the edge of the village and buried beneath the jack pines. Usually that rocker stood in its corner undisturbed weeks at a time, but occasionally there came a night, as this one, when his step on the stairs was slow, when he sighed wearily as he pulled off the Congress shoes, and at such times he would draw the chair out to a place by the stove in winter, to this place by the window in summer, and sit beside it and rock, and touch it now and then and talk to it—a great deal.

"She seems more like our own, Maggie," he said after a time. "I sat looking at her today in the office and she seemed like our own girl, not like some other man's—I s'pose that's 'cause she's young and sweet and the sort we'd like to have had for a daughter—if we'd ever had any—and she's in trouble too—though she don't know the worst yet—and needs a family—"

Silence, with the frogs and night insects far off.

"No, Maggie," shaking his head, "it won't do to hope too much. Sim Burns has talked a lot and stirred folks up and maybe if he was inclined to back down now he couldn't—and save his face—

"Looked up the assessed valuation of Chief Pontiac Power today—dams, buildings, key positions was all I knew—they've got it at two hundred thousand—they've got six millions in the county or I've got six legs."

He rocked a little more violently, the chair rumbling on the thin carpet.

"It's Harris I'm afraid of—he's intelligent and without scruple—which makes a worthy foe. He's shrewd—I've prodded around a little, but they're mighty close with their plans." He twisted his head and folded his hands across his stomach.

"Poor Helen—I don't know—she's always come to me when she's been in trouble and I've always been able to help her—but this time—I won't have much to say—maybe nothing—"

For long he rocked there, talking to the memory of the woman whose empty rocker was beside him. Late at night he rose and from his vest pocket drew the worn notebook with pages devoted to dates and hours and the names of men. He studied it gravely.

On the date at the top of a page he placed a gnarled finger. "An ace," he muttered. "They're always the first week in the month, when Pontiac Power pays off its other help." He moved his finger to the first column, which recorded the time and nodded briskly. "Another ace; there never have been two at once." He scanned the names written there and riffled the pages, on each of which was set down the personnel of the board of supervisors. "A third ace—they are all there—every time—" He closed the book and held it between his old palms.

"And—there's a card in the hole, but I'm afraid to look at it—and threes, even aces, aren't much to bet everything on."

CHAPTER XVII

Again the wide room in the Detroit House, with its windows giving on the formal garden, the group of white pines and the river. Luke Taylor sat there, his eyes fixed on the pines, listening to the deliberate, finely detailed report which his private secretary gave him. For an hour Rowe had talked, making no obvious effort to stress any one point, but watching the eyes that did not watch him, seeing the enthusiasm which had been in them give way to a cold light, watching that light grow hot, seeing the old lips work now and then; and prodding, when he knew that he had struck to the quick.

He finished and dropped the memoranda he had used to the table beside him. For an interval the old man did not move and when his position did change it was only a turn of the head to set his hard gaze on the other's face.

"You're sure of this, Rowe?"

"I've qualified everything I wasn't sure of."

"And he said that, did he? That he wanted to use my money for this—this damn moonshine?"

"Just as I've told you, sir."

"And that this was his reason: so no man could ever force her to cut until she gets good and ready?"

"Those were his words, as I remember them, sir. He said, too, that he'd rather lose his right arm than see her pine logged off."

Luke stirred and his palms tapped the arms smartly while he licked his lips. "So he's commenced to worry about other generations, has he? So he's got to be one of the old women in pants! I s'pose he thinks I'm a devastator, that I was little better than a crook when I took off my pine! So he wants me to use my money to wash away my sins, does he?"

He half rose from his chair and a purple rage swept into his face, making his hard eyes watery, making his lips tremble. "So he's one—"

A maid rapped and entered with a package and Luke broke short. But perhaps he had no words, anyhow, to relieve the seethe of passion that was in his heart.

"For you, Mr. Rowe," the girl said.

"These are photographs I took yesterday," he said, breaking the string. "I had the finishing rushed—I knew—"

"Eh? What's this? Pictures?" Luke's anger was neutralized for the moment by his interest. "Pictures of the pine, Rowe?"

"Yes, sir—see—"

He spread the damp prints on the table before him and Luke with unsteady hands adjusted his spectacles and leaned forward to see. For a lengthy interval he scanned the dozen photographs, going from one to the other, dropping back to study some feature that caught special attention, scarcely breathing; gradually his hands shut down closer on the chair arms and a snapping light appeared in his blue eyes, a hungry light, a glad light, fierce in its hunger and in its joy.

"Pine!" he muttered, almost reverently. "Michigan White Pine, Rowe! Baby pine! Good God—it's small—but thick as hair on a dog!"

He snatched off his spectacles and snapped: "Tolman was there?"

"Got in last night."

"And when 'll he report?"

"Tomorrow night, anyhow."

Luke leaned back weakly and breathed rapidly. He drew out his great gold watch and eyed it.

"Twelve o'clock," he whispered. "That means—thirty-six hours. " His lips shut as decisively as the case of the watch: with the same sort of definite snap. "Thirty-six hours," he repeated petulantly. "But then—we can't rush this thing! We've got to be sure, Rowe! Don't you go gettin' my hopes up without reason! Hopes of camps for the fall! God, with camps of my own in Michigan Pine they could throw that damn Floridy into the gulf! I wouldn't need their pesky sunshine to take the chill of Michigan rivers out of my bones then, Rowe!

"An' he said, did he, that he'd rather lose a leg than see that stuff cut?"

"It was an arm, sir—"

"Don't be so damned accurate, Rowe! Arm, eh? He's likely to get one whole side torn off!"

At dusk that evening old man Tolman unpacked his turkey which he had cached on the bank of a small creek that ran across the plains and into Foraker's Folly. He spread his blankets, built a very small fire, made coffee and fried bacon. He worked deftly, with the precision of a man who has lived well on little, scoured his dishes with sand, dropped a pair of green sticks on the coals and sat down in the smoke to defy the mosquitoes. He lighted his pipe there and puffed slowly, but after several moments his eyes went to the ragged banners of the solid pine beyond him, blue-black against the fading rose of the sky, and his puffing became more rapid, almost fevered and continued so until a sputter from the pipe bowl indicated that nothing remained but an expiring coal.

He rapped it against the heel of his boot and drew out a package of Peerless. He shook his head and sighed and almost smiled.

"I'll be blistered!" he muttered. "I'll be blistered! Pine—in a stand like that! Old Luke 'll go wild—clean, plumb, hog wild!"

And while Tolman watched the last glory of the dying day, Helen Foraker held her canoe against the rushes on the inside of a sharp bend in the river, while John Taylor in the bow shot his fly out across the swift current to where it milled against the far bank.

The water above them was old rose, like the sky, and a faintly violet mist hung over the stream, blending with the bottle-green of pine trees. The air was cool and damp and sweet, and from the water back in the rushes, from the midst of the current itself, May flies were hatching, coming to the surface like bubbles, spreading their new, damp wings, struggling a moment and then rising into the air to mingle with millions of their kind, to find mates, to function and pass on in their brief cycle, weakened by their hour of life, dropping back to the water which had given them life and into which they had put the life of their kind.

All about the surface was broken as fish rose to feed on the insects, but the girl's eyes were fixed on the deep pool across from them, and Taylor's eyes were there as well, and the fly went there again and again as a fish broke the white-flecked velvet blue of deep water rising from his lair to fall back with mighty splashes.

For twenty minutes Taylor sent his fly in, picked it up, dried it by false casts, drove it forward and let it rush over the pool; and the trout kept feeding all about that lure, selecting from the myriads of flies that swept over him only those which meant life—not death.

Rhythmatically, like a machine, the man cast, and finally the girl's eyes left the fish to watch him in silhouette against the sky, which had become pale orange. His hat was off and his profile was cleanly cut. She could see the ripple of arm and shoulder muscles beneath his shirt, could watch the good poise and co-ordination of trunk with limb as his whole splendid body went into the cast. And then the fish struck!

With an expulsion of breath like a glad, muffled cry, Taylor's right arm whipped back, above and behind his head. The bamboo bent in a stiff arc. His left arm tooled the line carefully as he gave out, as he took in, and the line itself where it disappeared into the current, laid back fin after fin of silvered water as the trout plowed here and there in his depths in frantic effort to be free. Upstream, downstream, across and back; sulking, moving slowly, rushing mightily; coming to the surface and showing his dorsal fin as he dived again; roving the bottom for snags or rocks that would cut the leader; for ten minutes the fish fought with the nobility which only the speckled trout puts into his will to live, and then he came gasping to net, looking like a dying flame with the crimson of his fins, the rich coloring of his belly.

"Good work!" Helen cried and dropped her paddle. "A beauty! He'll go two pounds. And you did it well!" Her eyes danced, her red lips parted in a glad smile and there was an excitement in her face, which Taylor had never seen there before, the enthusiasm for play, and as he looked at her, leaning forward, one arm stretched out to touch the trout, he saw a new part of her to dove-tail with her capability at her work, her tenderness with children: she was at that moment, a laughing, spontaneous young animal, lost in admiration of the fish he had caught, and in admiration of him. He knew this last; he could see it in her eyes.

They went downstream under the stars, Helen in the bow, singing in her clear voice the chant of the old French boatmen, picked up when she was a little girl from some woodsman.

They dragged the canoe out together, and their hands touched. It was the first time their flesh had met and a queer thrill ran through Taylor's body. He took his catch and walked with Helen to the door. She bade him good-night and went within very quietly. He watched her and moved on to the men's shanty, heedless of Pauguk who whined at her chain's length as he passed.

Jim Harris was inside, talking to Goddard. His speech was a bit louder than usual, he was a trifle eager, it seemed to John, to have it known that he had come to inquire after teams that would soon be finished with the hardwood logs; a few men and horses were needed at the lower dam, he said.

Beauchamp, the cook, and Harris and another gathered about Taylor and commented on his catch. Goddard did not leave his bunk where he sat, elbows on knees, glowering at John. Black Joe, who was sewing a button on his shirt, looked up and grunted in disdain as Taylor proudly held up the big trout. The cook took the fish to the kitchen. Harris sat down beside Goddard and talked. Two men remained with Black Joe who, as he drew thread clumsily through the flannel, resumed the talk that Taylor had interrupted.

"Now how about this here gold mine of Paul's, Joe?" one of them asked.

The old fellow puffed on his short pipe a moment and then began to talk, lowly, haltingly, and those with him listened eagerly, set smiles on their faces.

It was another Paul Bunion story, Taylor knew, and watched and tried to overhear, but could not. Ever since coming into this country he had heard references to Paul Bunion. "Who is he?" he had once asked Helen and she had laughed: "The Munchausen of the forests, my father used to say. He also said that Paul would be in living literature when the Baron was forgotten."

That explained little, but Taylor gathered that Joe was an authority on the great Paul. Night after night he would sit with a few of those who were beyond his scorn listening while he ambled on. He was jealous of his tales, though, reserving them only for those who stood in his favor. Taylor had tried to join the group, but each attempt had caused Joe to drop into sullen silence, broken only when John withdrew.

As he fussed aimlessly about his bunk, Taylor watched Harris and Goddard. Jim talked confidentially, easily, and Goddard listened, smoking a cigar, evidently flattered by the attention. But that attention was not wholly for Goddard because Harris' eyes went from time to time to Black Joe and when the two who listened to the story of the gold mine laughed heartily Harris stopped talking altogether and smiled and a certain restlessness showed in his eyes.

Beauchamp came in and prepared to shave. Harris rose and walked toward Joe's bunk.

"Joe, have a cigar," he said.

The woodsman stopped talking. He eyed Harris slowly as he had at first eyed John Taylor. He removed his pipe and spat and said:

"Who? Me? I promised my mother I'd never smoke 'em!"

Harris rumbled a laugh, but flushed slightly, for the contempt in Joe's manner was unmistakable.

"All right then, I'll keep 'em for the wicked, Joe. Go on with your story," sitting down.

"Story? What story?" Joe asked, black eyes blazing and turned away and put the gnawed pipe stem between his teeth and smoked in confusing silence.

Harris attempted to recover his poise, but he did not urge a resumption of the tale, and soon was gone, followed as far as his waiting car by Goddard.

Beauchamp was laughing as he lathered his face and winked at John.

"Py gosh, Jim Harris she don' nefer get Joe to tell heem 'bout Paul Bunion." He lifted two fingers of the hand which held the razor. "For two year, now, he come here for Joe to tell heem 'bout Paul. Wan taam, before she go dry, he make Joe drunk an' try, but Joe—" shaking his head, "she don' gife wan damn for Jim Harris. She nefer say wan word 'bout Paul when he's 'roun'.

"I tell heem, Joe you wan beeg fool. Jim Harris pay you money for to tell 'bout Paul—but Joe she don' care 'bout money. Py gosh, I can' maak moch from dat man, Joe—

"An' Jim Harris—py damn, dat's all he wan' dat he don' git: Joe, for to tell heem 'bout Paul Bunion! Eferybody in Pancake, she know what Harris wan' an' what he can' get!" He shrugged and lifted the razor to his cheek.

Jim had driven away and Goddard stood alone. He glanced within the men's shanty and saw Taylor talking to the cook. One of the great hands at his side closed slowly and he walked away toward the big house where Helen sat at her desk, turning idly the pages of a lumber trade journal.

"Did you have a good time—fishing?" he asked.

She had looked up at his entrance; at his tone she dropped her eyes.

"Yes, Milt. We made a nice catch."

He laughed shortly. "I notice you haven't took time to fish with me this spring."

"No, we've both been very busy."

"Yeah—both of us. But you ain't too busy to go out with Taylor."

A quick flush appeared in her cheeks. "That's entirely uncalled for Milt. You do a lot lately to make it unpleasant for me. I don't think it's fair in you and I don't like it because—you haven't the right."

The hand at his side closed tightly again. "No right," he growled. "Maybe not. Before he come up here, though, you used to think enough of me."

"I thought of you then as I do now: as a good friend, as a loyal friend, as a man who has done more for me in the actual work than any one else." Her manner was very positive.

"Nothing else?" he demanded.

She looked down and shook her head. "Nothing else, Milt. You should know that. You have tried to persuade me to think—differently of you. It—it has made it very hard for me, because I don't want to hurt you,—and I can't—"

"And yet you'll run around with this—this—" gesturing toward the men's shanty.

"Which is my own affair," she said simply. "I'm sorry, but there must be a limit to what I let you say."

"Maybe that's what interests me," he said sharply, narrowing his eyes and leaning over the desk. "Maybe I'm interested because it's your own affair, and what happens to you—means a lot to me," voice dropping to a whisper. "I don't want you to make any mistakes that you will be sorry for."

His heart was racing, hot words of jealousy clamored to be out, but he repressed them, and searching wildly for some device which would grip her interest and give him different standing in her eyes, he threw out that empty threat.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

His baseless innuendo had struck the mark! She believed that it was backed by something other than his helpless jealousy. He flushed hotly and stood erect.

"Never mind what I mean," he said. "Maybe I can't tell you—just tonight. I don't want to say anything against anybody until I'm sure."

"But you make hints!" insistently.

"Yes, I'd do a lot to help you, Helen."

She rose and moved about the desk toward him, placing a hand on his shoulder. He dropped his gaze and plucked at a paper.

"I know that, Milt," she said. "I know you'd do anything for me. There is—there's nothing between Mr. Taylor and me. Please believe that." Her color had mounted.

"I know there ain't—much—yet—" he mumbled. "I don't want there to be, because—"

"I'm waiting," when he did not finish.

He looked up at her and was again assured when he saw the sober query in her face.

"So am I—waitin' to be sure. But I'd take a chance at being wrong, at being unfair to anybody for you—unfair to anybody, let alone him!"

An hour later the lights were out and in the men's shanty snores were heavy, but Goddard lay awake, flushed with helpless anger. It was little satisfaction to know that his groundless warning had troubled Helen. The time might come when he would be called to explain and he was seized with an agony of helplessness.

There in the lamplight, she had looked so lovely, so wonderful! She was not his kind, she was finer, gentler, of different stuff, but for five years he had served her loyally, had worked night and day, had fought for her on occasion; and through these years he had come to covet her, come to picture without good reason her life united with his. There had been no opposition, no competition except the gulf between them until this Taylor came. From the first he had sensed the fact that the city man was nearer Helen than he ever could come, and he loved as he had never loved before—and he hated as he did not know he could hate.

He clutched the blankets in his great hands and twisted them. There was so little he could do! But he did not know that over by a quiet stream old man Tolman lay awake, staring up at the stars, marvelling at what he had seen that day; or that Luke Taylor muttered and cocked his head to hear the breeze sounding in the white pines that stood in his garden and recalled those photographs he had seen that day, or that Philip Rowe sat in his room smoking, thin lips drawn in a strange smile of triumph.

These he could not know, and he did not know that in another bunk in that same building another man lay sleepless, hearing again the bitter words of Marcia Murray, quailing from them, suffering, and feeling that pain and humiliation absolved by the touch of Helen Foraker's hand on his, beside the Blueberry that evening.

CHAPTER XVIII

So passed Tuesday. And Wednesday passed, fair and clear and peaceful overhead and in the forest. The last of the rafts were coming down the river without trouble or delay; the band-saw in the mill ate steadily through the good logs, the piles of lumber beside the track grew. There was no hint of trouble and the shaking that John Taylor's very soul had undergone in his scene with Marcia steadily subsided under three influences: the first was the fact that he had made peace with himself; the second, that he had won his father's trust and interest in his plan, so in a matter of days he would be able to tell Helen Foraker that the threat which Sim Burns held over her could be met with a laugh; and the third influence was the girl of the forest herself, whose charm and consequence grew hourly, bringing a strange combination of peace and restlessness.

But Wednesday evening Jim Harris' car rolled out toward Foraker's Folly again and picked up Tolman who, his turkey packed, stood beside the unused road waiting. Two hours later, the old cruiser sat in the telephone booth in the Commercial House, pouring his information over the wire into the ear of Luke Taylor, who clutched the receiver and strained forward, whose eyes glittered avidly as he listened and whose responses were short, profane and joyful.

Thursday afternoon John was in Pancake, billing out another shipment of his lumber, arranging for more cars. He finished his errand and stood in the small ticket office making some necessary notes when the telegraph key set up an insistent clamor. The agent cut in and answered, slipped blanks into the typewriter and began to take.

John started out.

"Wait—this 's for you," the man said.

Taylor closed the door and stood beside the operator's chair, reading his name and address as it went down, letter by letter.

And then came this, a letter, a syllable, a word at a time:

"Rowe says you would rather lose right arm than see pine you brought to my attention cut. If you want to help me in logging this place I will use you. If not, get away from the wheels. They are going to go round and you will regret reckless offer of anatomy in name of moonshine.—L. Taylor."

He took the yellow sheet and stared blankly at the typed message. He heard the operator say, "Sign this," in a voice that came from a great distance. He walked out of the station and stood on the platform, reading the warning again, numb and bewildered.

Luke Taylor wanted Foraker's Folly! His father, who had experienced his highest moments when his men were taking pine forests from the Michigan valleys, who had grumbled since John could remember that there was no joy in living, who had dreamed aloud of Michigan pine, who had wistfully, irately voiced the futile wish that he might finish his years as he began his ascendency to fortune, harvesting more of the pine which had made him a power! His father saw happiness at last in Helen Foraker's pine! His father wanted to do that which John had wanted to make forever impossible! His father, greedy, stubborn, powerful even in his wornout body, wanted to possess and cut that timber, making of the forest lumber and blackened slashing!

He stopped on the walk and read the message again, and thrust his hands into his pockets and stared blankly across the street. He did not see the office of the Banner or the poolroom or any of the flimsy, familiar buildings. He saw his father's face, saw the ruthless light in his eyes, saw the thin lips stretch in a greedy smile, and heard his hard voice saying the things that had come to him by telegraph.

"Oh, God," he muttered. "I wanted to help—and I brought this on her!"

He went into the bank to make a deposit. He heard Ezam Grainger say to a farmer:

"No, she isn't so well today—yes, I've sold and am going to take her right out of here," and clear his throat and blink rapidly to keep the mist of worry from his eyes.

Taylor gave no heed, no more did he know what Jim Harris said when they met on the bank steps, or what Henry Wales said when he entered the Commercial House to call Detroit by telephone.

It seemed hours before the connection was made. He walked the office floor and read and re-read that telegram; the paper grew wet from the nervous moisture of his fingers and finally the letters themselves blurred before his eyes as the import of what he had done revealed its awful possibilities. Better anything than this: Luke Taylor the destroyer, with his will and fortune, set against Helen Foraker, who played a lone hand for an intangible thing like an ideal.

The telephone bell whirred.

"Yes, Taylor?"

It was Rowe's voice.

"I was calling father, Phil."

"He understands that. He wants me to talk for him."

"Isn't he there?"

"Right here beside me."

"Then let me talk to him, please!"

Pause. He heard Rowe's voice, much fainter. "He insists on talking to you, sir." Another voice, but he could not distinguish the words; then:

"Your father still wants to know if you think more of that pine forest than you do of your right arm?"

"I—I haven't changed my mind since you were here."

A wait, hollow, indistinct voices. "I will be up again Sunday—your father says if you change your mind you may talk it over with me then. I have authority to deal for him."

His voice was very even, impersonal, but somehow it stung John as though it had been a crow of triumph. He waited a moment, breathing rapidly.

"Very well, Rowe," he said finally. "I will talk to you Sunday. Good-bye."

He walked from the hotel and Humphrey Bryant appeared in the doorway of his office rather excitedly.

"Going back soon?"

"As quick as I fill up with gas."

"Stop in, will you? I've a note for Helen."

He turned back into the office, drawing his spectacles down from his forehead, thin white hair standing high above his pink scalp. He seemed hurried and flustered and when Taylor returned for the message he thought the bright blue eyes looked at him almost with hostility. Surely, trouble was in them, and the old editor was curt in his manner.

All the way home Taylor drove doggedly. A part of him wanted to turn back, to go away, to leave this mess which he had brought down upon Foraker's Folly. Oh, he had wanted to help, and he had brought the ideal which was represented in the pine forest face to face with a hungry power which was its worst enemy! He had wanted to help and had done the worst he could have done by conscious planning. He had wanted to lighten the burden on Helen's shoulders and had increased it to a crushing weight—so he wanted to run—to run.

That was the mean part of him, that was the impulse which was out of the question. There was but one thing for him to do: Tell her, face the fact, stand beside her and fight his father—with his inexperience and bare hands.

A sudden emptiness came about his middle, as though strength had drained from his vitals.

Helen was not at home when he entered, prepared to blurt out his confession. He left the note from Bryant on her desk and went out, so absorbed in his problem that he even forgot Pauguk and went too close and had to leap beyond her reach as she rushed at him, snarling wickedly.

He could not eat that night, and Beauchamp made much of his bad appetite, complaining half in fun as he brought food to the table.

"Ah well," the Frenchman said finally, nodding his head. "I unnerstan', M'sieur Taylor. Eet iss spring. All de bird, she buil' nest; all de animal, she maak lofe. An' a yo'ng man, she feel her 'eart turn ofer, too. Eh?"

He laughed and others laughed and John flushed. He was conscious of Goddard's eyes on him with glowering ill temper.

Helen did not return till after dusk. Taylor had been walking the river bank, miserable and at once impatient and filled with dread. He saw her standing beside her desk, scanning intently a single sheet of paper. He ran forward. His rap was most perfunctory; he opened the screen and stepped in.

She turned and faced him and he saw fright in her face that chilled his heart. Just for that instant, and then she turned and went unsteadily across the room saying:

"I can't talk to you—Mr. Taylor—tonight."

Did she know? Was she aware of what he had done? He managed to say:

"Wait, Helen!" There was that in his husky tone which checked her against the far door. Breath clogged in his throat, but he heard himself saying: "Tell me why you can't talk to me."

He crossed the room toward her, bound to hold her there if necessary, to tell his wretched story quickly, to save himself not at all, and to offer all he had to offer as help.

He was decisive, showing a strength she had not seen before, a power which held her there. He stopped within arm's length of the girl and looked into her face. He saw no anger, no resentment; just misery. She was unpoised, she was shaken, like a little girl who has been badly frightened.

"What is it?" he demanded. "Why can't you talk to me. I must know—because I have something to say to you."

He spoke swiftly, with desperate assurance, but the desperation did not carry to her: only the assurance. He seemed strong, big and so much in earnest, with no humility, no deference. She held the paper she had been reading toward him with a gesture that was almost timid.

"That explains," she said, and stood there, fingers spread on her breast while he moved nearer the light to read.

It was the note he had brought from Humphrey Bryant, written on a sheet of news print.

"Dear Helen:—I can't trust the telephones and must stay on the job to do what I can, so this news must go to you by note. Gird yourself for fighting and trouble.

"A special meeting of the supervisors is called for Saturday, set ahead two weeks, I understand, solely because I have been trying to head it off. They will take action to submit the bonds for roads and a new court house at a July election. If this goes through, it will be hard to stop their pillaging, for we have not been mistaken in the property which they expect will pay the bill.

"To make matters worse, Harris got wind of my activities against the proposal and has invited the entire board to a fishing party at the lower dam. They are having a high time, well guarded. I daren't leave town to see you for fear of missing a chance to get at them when he is not there.

"Troubles never come singly. Pontiac Power has bought Grainger out. Your mortgage is due this month and I am trying to get him to renew it himself before he leaves town with his wife, who is sick.

"There is no use playing ostrich because a storm is coming. Keep a stiff upper lip and get mad! If we keep mad enough, we can weather this crisis and we know nothing worse can happen.—Yours to the last ditch, H. B."

Taylor looked up, brows gathered, eyes reflecting the bewilderment that had come over him.

"—nothing worse can happen," he quoted, looking again at the page.

She began to speak, but he could not hear her.

Nothing worse could happen! Ah, the chincanery of Jim Harris, the scheming of these backwoods politicians, the misfortune of having her mortgage in unsympathetic hands were inconsequential details compared to what he had to tell her.

Her words swam into his consciousness:

"—so I've thought all along it was something to meet—later. I might have known that they wouldn't delay, that it would come now, not next month, not next year—but somehow," spreading her hands "I haven't had the courage to bring it close and tell myself that the danger was here—and real. I've grown a little tired like my father grew tired; I've had a lot to meet—and now this comes—"

Her eyes were very wide as she looked into his and shook her head slowly; her chin trembled.

"And this other—if I can't renew that mortgage—" with a helpless lift of one hand. "Twenty thousand dollars! I couldn't raise a thousand! And my father's work—our hopes—oh, I feel so much alone!"

Her arms were half extended as she stopped. She averted her face, and for a moment Taylor stood there stunned. She was broken by what Bryant had written her—and if he should tell what he had come to tell? That would be cruelty now, he told himself; it would be sheer heartlessness not to spare her further suffering for a few hours at least—and while he waited, helpless to help her, he saw her clutch her fists and a low moan escaped her lips.

The sound was like the bite of a lash and he stepped forward, reached out his hands, checked the gesture and left them hovering over her shoulders. For an instant he was so and then drew back, afraid to touch her, lost, knowing no word to say, no move to make; but a ragged breath caught in her throat and he found his palms on her arms, gripping roughly, turning her about, and the feel of her flesh under his fingers clarified everything.

"Helen!" he cried. "Helen! you're not alone! I'm here, with you. I'm going to stay. I'm going to help you!"

She looked up in wonder at the manner of his voice. He had spoken no boast, no empty promise; there was a modesty, a simplicity about him which indicated strength, ability, earnestness, and she read those qualities in his face. For the first time she saw maturity there, for the first time she was almost in awe of him.

She felt his hands gripping her arms. She felt herself drawn forward, close and closer to him, and put out her hands, not to hold her body away, but to place them against his breast, pressing her finger tips into his flesh. Her lips were parted, breath light and quick. She felt his arms go about her almost roughly, saw his face darken and heard his voice, thick and husked with passion:

"I won't let them harm you!" he said tensely. "I'll stand by you. I don't know much—yet; I'm young, but I'm strong and with you to fight for—I can do anything!"

He trembled. She was there in his arms, submissive, her hands were against his body in a strange caress and he felt her limbs touching his, warm and firm. He closed his eyes and shook his head as though fearful that this would not endure a moment of sightlessness; but she was there when he opened them. This was real; this was no vagary of his distressed mind—and he laughed.

That laugh roused Helen and she drew back, breaking his embrace slowly, staring at him as though this that he had done frightened her.

"John!" she said under her breath. "John? What is—this?"

She backed away.

"Don't you know?" he muttered. She did not speak, and he advanced slowly until he was looking down into her uplifted face. "Don't you know?" She did not answer and he took one of her wrists in his hand savagely. "Helen! Don't you know—now!"

Her breath was driven from her lungs as he wrapped his arms about her fiercely, and that breath, escaping through lips and nostrils, was hot on his cheek as it lowered to hers—as hot as his lips on her mouth.

She closed her eyes and let her head fall back.

"Yes—I know—now," she whispered.

Her eyes opened and looked into his; for a long moment their gazes clung, and in that look was an understanding which made words both inadequate and unnecessary. But words followed. In low voices, in broken sentences, rising in tone and with fewer pauses.

"And you came—when I needed you so!" she said in a thin, strained voice. "I need you, John. I'm going—to depend on you—so much—so much." He tried to hold her even closer, but she took her arms from about his neck and drew away, backing toward the door. "I need you so badly—and I've needed you for so long—I guess—that I can't have you near me tonight John—not tonight—not this night."

He followed impulsively to the door, but it closed in his face.

"Please! Please!" he heard her say through it. He made no move. The sound of her steps died away. He stood alone in the room, hands at his side opening and closing slowly.

And in the darkness outside, Milt Goddard who had spied and seen all, fingered the bit of the axe he had taken from the woodpile.

Taylor started across the room to the door and Goddard crouched and crept forward—and stopped. John opened the screen.

The axe dropped from the other's hands, he moved away, putting the great trunk of Watch Pine between himself and Taylor. Then he turned and stumbled into the night, muttering:

"I ain't got the nerve—I ain't got th' nerve to kill him!"

CHAPTER XIX

In such a manner, happiness was born of turmoil.

Helen Foraker had taken young Taylor into her hands and unconsciously moulded him into the man she would have; he had grown, he had changed, and though he had yet to prove his mettle, he bore rich promise. And when he came in her darkest hour and pledged his strength in her cause she found that she needed the things a man so moulded, could give. Not his help, first, but his love, his trust, the sanctuary of his arms.

But Taylor held that secret which he dared not tell the girl and even that night while the glory of her yielded lips was still fever in his blood he felt the mounting of apprehension, much like the misgiving which had been born that night in Florida when his father made his gift of logs, when Philip Rowe had smirked. He went to sleep, memory of her hands about his neck mingling with his father's face leering at his efforts to protect the forest from a destroying force.

"I felt so secure last night," she told him in the early day. "I felt that Jim Harris—no one, can hurt me now. I told you once that there were impulses in my heart that never had a chance to grow. This one, John, is the strongest of them; it has been held back more than any other; repression gave it strength. Its breaking free was so sudden, so overwhelming—I didn't dare stay—last night."

She put her face against his shoulder.

There had been no restraint, no shyness in her greeting He had her in his arms when she spoke and she could feel him tremble at her words, but before he could reply they heard Black Joe grumble at Pauguk as he came around the corner of the house.

Joe came up the steps and gave his curt little bob.

"Say, Helen, will you tell her that th' boys at th' mill found a bee tree and if she wants any honey I cattalate she'd better send the kids down with a bucket."

"Yes, Joe; I will tell her."

The woodsman went and she moved close to Taylor again.

"It's funny, but it's heart breaking," she said. "That is what misunderstanding will do. For twenty years they haven't spoken, and they loved twenty years ago. A misunderstanding came, and probably they've both forgotten what it was now. Stubbornness has kept them apart and made them both sour. My father said that Aunty May used to be the gayest girl on the Blueberry and that Black Joe always sang at his work. Their quarrel came and they have not spoken since. Each is only holding out for the other to break the silence and growing more bitter and older, Aunty May trying to make another woman's children ease her heartache, Joe hiding the hurt under his crustiness and living only for the nursery.

"We can't ever risk a misunderstanding, can we?"

She looked at him closely.

"Why, John, what is it?" startled.

"What is what?"

"You look so—so strange!"

He was conscious that he was flushing; flushing because the thing he kept from Helen for her own peace of mind was a splendid nucleus for misunderstanding. But she was on her way to Pancake, even then, to learn more of the menaces which hung over the forest. He could not tell her now. Tonight, he told himself, tonight he would give her the whole miserable story. So he laughed her startled question away and watched her drive down the road.

It was night when she returned, mouth set and eyes serious.

"It looks dark," she said hoarsely in answer to his question. "Darker than ever. All last night and all today Humphrey Bryant has tried to get in touch with the different supervisors, but Jim Harris has them all down at the big dam where they can't be reached. Harris has heard that Humphrey was trying to block his game and fixed so we couldn't get to any of the board until it meets—and then Harris will be there, and he holds them in the hollow of his hand.

"If he could be locked up, driven away from that meeting long enough for Humphrey to get at them! He has something up his sleeve, some little thing, such a faint hope that he won't even confide in me! All he asks is ten minutes alone with the board, and he might as well ask for help from Harris!"

It was later in the evening that Taylor walked aimlessly toward the nursery. He had not seen Black Joe there and was almost on the humped figure which prodded in a seed bed before he noticed the old fellow. Joe looked up, gave a contemptuous sniff and began gathering his few implements, for it was nearly dark. He went off toward the men's shanty without again looking at Taylor.

John walked on and stood looking absently down the rows of transplants a few moments and then retraced his steps until a movement in the ground attracted him. He watched and saw the stirring of a mole as it made slow progress. It went beneath the path and entered a seed bed, where stood pine trees no higher than a man's finger is long. Taylor watched the tiny trees heaving before the disturbance, saw their hair-like roots break through the loam. He removed his pipe and looked toward the shanty for Joe.

"By Jove!" he muttered. "That'll hurt 'em."

He walked quickly out of the nursery.

Joe was on the deacon bench, filling his pipe. Two of the men were with him and Taylor knew that the woodsman was settling himself for a yarn. He hesitated as Joe looked at him with indifference, but he went on down the room and stopped by the group.

"I was in the nursery, Joe," he said, "and I saw something you might want to know." The older man crammed the Peerless into his pipe-bowl and glared up at the intruder. "There's a mole in one of the seed beds and—"

No chance to finish! With a snort of alarm Joe was on his feet, hurrying toward the door.

"Come on," he snapped, when John did not follow. "Show me where!"

Taylor followed at a trot as Joe hastened across the open space and in the dusk searched for the telltale welt in the soft earth.

"There! See?"

Joe had seen the welt and the disturbed trees and he commenced to curse, steadily, frightfully, as he floundered about in the darkness.

"Cut back to th' shanty an' git somethin'!" he snapped. "Somethin' to make a widder mole—'n axe or anythin'—cut an' run for it!"

Taylor cut and ran, passing the two who had been with Joe inside and who had followed leisurely. A broad-axe was within the door, the first implement John saw; he seized it and ran back.

Then followed a tense interval with Joe, axe upraised, stooping over the seed bed, watching in the growing darkness for the movement which would betray the intruder's presence. He muttered and gave no heed to the others. John kept close by him, also on the watch for the movement in the soil and once Joe pushed him aside as they both groped over the same area.

"Git away," he complained, "or you'll git hurted along with this here blind devil!"

John stood back, then, but he did not go away. The other two sauntered away, uninterested in the affair which had aroused Joe to such excitement. The old fellow kept up his vigilance, axe ready to strike, muttering to himself, until it was no longer possible to see.

Then he straightened and looked about, saw Taylor and grunted.

"Damn him to hot hell!" he whispered. "He'll ruin this here bed if he gits a chance!"

It was the closest to a friendly comment he had ever made to the other and John moved closer.

"Sh!" Joe warned. "Keep still! He's here some'eres an' we got to watch. You git a lantern; I'll stand guard."

John returned to the shanty and came back with the lighted lantern. Again they searched, but without result, and then Joe directed John to follow the mole's trail to the boundary of the nursery and tramp it down carefully, while he kept up his vigilant watch, eyes bright, head moving constantly as, stooped above the bed, he still searched for movement.

Fifteen minutes passed, a half hour; no more indication of the mole.

"He's here yet," Joe whispered. "We gotta wait. Here gimme, that lantern."

Joe placed it on the ground so. they could see. Then he lowered his axe and stood by, relaxing for the first time. Taylor had been partly amused by this performance, but as he saw the seriousness with which Joe confronted this comparatively trivial damage to his seedlings his interest was thoroughly aroused.

"I reckon mebby we could set down," Joe whispered and dragged a cracker box toward the lantern. "We'll watch an' we'll sure slay him, th' first move he makes!"

In his plan he was including Taylor, on whom he had always looked with scorn!

John settled himself with a fresh pipe, and Joe sat beside him, silent, eyes on the damaged bed, axe in his hands. Twice he started up sharply; once he rose and stood crouched over the place, axe upraised, ready to strike, holding his breath; then sank to the box with a muttered curse.

He looked at Taylor closely, for a long moment; then down at the axe, and something like chagrin flickered in his eyes.

"Anybody who didn't have good sense 'uld think a feller was crazy to carry on like this," he said, straightening a leg, and again looking at the mighty weapon with which he had planned to kill the small rodent, "but these here seed was special selected an' we can't let no damned mole spoil our work."

John sensed that Joe feared he might be making himself absurd and wanted to avoid that impression at any cost.

"That's right," he said lowly, "We'll get him."

Joe spit and nodded.

"Damn bet! We'll set here all night, but we'll git him."

Spit. Silence. Voices from the shanty.

"Course with ordinary seedlin's a man wouldn't set out all night," he went on after a bit, "but these here's different—special select; somethin' me an' Foraker started long time ago an' me an' Helen's been keepin' up."

John watched him; Joe was talking without being urged, without much reserve, after those weeks of aloof scorn.

"Y'see," gesturing with his paper of tobacco, "I took these here seeds from trees that was naterally whoopin' er up, growin' like weeds. Me an' Foraker 'nd Helen, now, thinks mebby we c'n work trees like the gov'm't works wheat an' corn; git th' seed from the best stock; improve your—"

He stooped and leaned forward, rising slowly to a crouch, spitting on a palm as he grasped his axe; then sank back again with a quiet oath of disappointment.

"That sounds reasonable," said John and nodded.

Joe looked at him sharply, as though suspecting that Taylor was skeptical, but he saw the genuine regard for his idea in the younger man's face and looked away and sighed with satisfaction.

"I thought mebby you had a little sense," he said.

Taylor smiled and buttoned his coat.

"You can't do much in a short time, though, can you?" he asked.

"Twenty years, mebby; mebby more. Foraker used to say a lifetime." Shrug. Spit. "Me 'nd Helen 'nd him are th' only ones—besides the professors—who've got sense enough to git intrusted."

"Maybe you'll let me in on that, Joe. I'm interested. There are so darned many big things going on around here that a greenhorn can't show interest in them all at once—where'd you find the seed bearers you wanted?"

Joe told him at length, told of their experiences, the data they had assembled, warming to his subject, all but forgetting the mole. He no longer looked away from Taylor, but peered closely into his face and answered questions and talked—and talked—and talked.

For years he had worked in that nursery, tending his seedlings as he would so many children, talking to few but Helen and her father about his work, finding none but them and professional foresters who were interested in what he was doing. He found a pride in these accomplishments and was hungry for appreciation; he could talk to the men of the crew about logging, could tell his Bunion tales and find an interested audience. But for the matters closest to his heart there was no outlet—until now, when this city boy sat beside him on a cracker box, watching for a mole, listening, unafraid to betray ignorance by questions—

Lights went out in the shanty; sounds of men ceased. The moon came up and still the two sat, collars up, for the night was cool, whispering, watching the seed bed for the stirring that would end their vigil—

And then Joe talked of the forest, what it had been, what it was and might be; of Foraker himself and of Helen—

Men can say worlds about women with the use of a few simple words.

"She's a good girl," Joe said of Helen Foraker, without much emphasis, with only a slight nod of his head, but in that sentence was an indication of devotion and loyalty that could not be mistaken. "She's—

"Look there!"

His whisper was the barest breath. They rose together, creeping toward the lantern. There was no wind, their movements were of the lightest, but in the center of the bed was a stirring, a heaving among the little trees—

The axe rose slowly; it poised, and then it swept down and buried itself in the ground—

"Got him!" cried Joe. "Got him!" as he turned back the earth with the blade.

He grinned then and spit in delight and repeated again and again that he had "got him."

Carefully he made temporary repairs to the damage in the bed and then picked up the lantern.

"Now we'll hit th' bunks, Johnny," he chuckled. "A good night's work, lad!"

They walked slowly toward the men's shanty, shoulder to shoulder, like old friends. Before the door they stopped and Taylor said:

"There's one thing I want to put up to you, Joe. You're the only man I can go to with it and it's about—Helen."

"Helen?"

"Yes."

"You'd do a lot for her, wouldn't you, Black Joe?"

"Who? Me? Dyin' would be easy—for her!"

He went on haltingly to extoll the girl's virtues and Taylor smoked thoughtfully, some of the perplexity that had been in his gathered brows even during that successful venture into a new friendship departing, a strange sort of twinkle in his eyes, and when Joe stopped Taylor looked about to see that they were unobserved and lowered his voice and talked; and Joe nodded and grunted and once he cursed heavily, forbiddingly.

Joe began to question—to plan in whispers.

"Sure, I know! I allus watch 'em as I don't like. I know his habits—he's chased after me—chased—an' I wouldn't talk to him—not before—"

He laughed silently.

CHAPTER XX

Saturday was a lazy June day; there was little breeze, little movement of any sort and blue-bottle flies droned through the open door of the office of the Blueberry Banner. Humphrey Bryant sat in his chair, arms hanging limply from his shoulders, one foot resting on its side, the other leg sprawled before him.

It was nearly noon. All day yesterday, all the night before he had worked to batter down the defense that Jim Harris had built about the individuals of his board of supervisors—his by right of possession. It had availed nothing. Bryant had watched them come into town, watched them gather at the court house and he could see them now, in the upper corner of the red building, moving about as they got at the work before them—

That he could see, and something else, the feet of Jim Harris, propped against the window sill, as he tilted his chair backward and let the machinery of legislation grind its way—the way he had directed. Those feet rested idly enough, lazily enough, but Bryant knew that they were ready to stamp down upon any challenge that might be flaunted, that Harris would not leave that meeting until the motion to adjourn had carried, that it was such vigilance that had made him valuable to Pontiac Power, and a menace to honest men.

And the old editor was slumped listlessly in his chair, riffling the pages of that worn note book because he was an old man, and a shrewd old man; being old, he had lost his best vigor; being shrewd he did not deceive himself. His heart did not falter and he tried to see clearly, but he read in those contented feet a barrier against which any javelin he might hurl in the cause of right would crumple and fall.

The morning freight came down and John Taylor and Black Joe, who had swung aboard at Seven Mile, dropped off and walked up First Street, Taylor looked into the Banner office.

"Have dinner with us?" he asked.

"No thanks, Taylor. Chained to the desk today."

There was no laugh in the blue eyes and they did not rest long on Taylor's face. They were fixed on those feet in that court house window.

John and Black Joe went on.

"Chained to his desk," Black Joe muttered and laughed, "An' his eyes glued on that damn tin court house!"

They entered the poolroom. It was a dingy, smelly place, with two battered tables on a littered floor that still bore the faint marks of river boots. The cigar case was fly specked and broken and patched. There was a dusty one-eyed deer on the wall beside a lithograph of a fat-legged girl in red stockings, and a dirty-faced clock. A stuffed owl stared fixedly from the opposite wall and there was a faded photograph of the Blueberry, jammed with pine logs over which rivermen posed self-consciously.

Joe eyed the stock of cigars.

"What seegar is it Jim Harris smokes?" he asked. "He give me one onct—"

"This one, Joe," the greasy-faced proprietor said. "Fifteen centers. Good stuff, that; none better. Jim always buys here," proudly. "Comes in after every meal, regular as a clock."

"That so? Always comes here, eh?

"Yup. Says I know how to keep tobacco, an' Jim sure ought to know."

"He sure ought," said Joe, putting the cigar in his pocket and bringing out his pipe and Peerless.

The two retired to a bench in the window and talked, heads close together.

Noon. Movement on the court house steps as the board adjourned for dinner and trooped together to the Commercial House to eat with Jim and on Jim.

Harris was in fine feather. This morning the resolutions had been drawn as he had planned and this afternoon the board would pass them, as he had planned. Within sixty days the county would bond itself for a new court house which was sop to the community pride, and the roads, which would speed the settling of that waste land to the northward with more wretched families.

After the meal Harris bought cigars for the board members at the hotel desk; he did not take one for himself and when the others started back toward the court house he lumbered across the street to the poolroom, waving his hand and saying that he would be along directly.

He meant that. But he was forced to wait for attention because the proprietor sat on the wide window ledge, beside him was Lucius Kildare and on the bench facing them sat Black Joe, pipe in his hands, leaning forward, talking earnestly. John Taylor occupied the rest of the bench and another lounger leaned over the back, grinning broadly.

Black Joe's gaze was directed at the face of the poolroom owner and he held the man's attention even after he knew that the great Jim Harris waited.

Then the proprietor broke away and Joe leaned back and puffed while Harris took a handful of cigars from the box. Silence.

"An' you never heerd tell 'bout Paul's mule team?" Joe asked Taylor.

"Never!"

Joe shook his head and clicked his tongue. "My Lord, you're igerent," he said and hitched about to face Taylor, and see Harris. He waited a moment before he commenced to talk, prefacing his tale by a moment of suspense, as is the way with the best spinners of yarns. Harris, biting off the end of his cigar, watched. There had been no unfriendly stare from Black Joe this time; there seemed to be no barrier between the woodsman and any who might be within earshot. For months Jim Harris had awaited such a moment.

He looked down the street. The last of the supervisors was disappearing within the court house. Had Joe waited another instant Jim might have gone on to join them, but Joe did not wait. He commenced to talk, slowly, deliberately. He told his story as the Bunion stories have been told for two generations in the Lake States. Those about him were schooled listeners; they knew when to inject the questions that led him into the byways of Bunion classics, knew when to laugh, when to repress their mirth until the point of the narrative should be completed.

And Jim Harris waited and listened, wanting to go, putting aside his caution from moment to moment because Black Joe was recounting the adventures of this mythical logger and to hear any of Joe's kind and generation tell these tales is to be blessed.

This is the story that Black Joe told:

"Now, this here mule team of Paul's was a right good pair. They done a lot of work an' Paul he treated 'em right, allus cattelatin' it was best policy to be good to stock. When they was workin' hard it cost a lot to keep 'em up fer sure, but when they was just standin' in th' barn he only fed 'em four bushels of corn to th' feed.

"Paul fed 'em hisself, when he wasn't away, an' when he was gone Swede Charley looked atter 'em—along with th' ox-team, little Babe an' her mate. You heerd tell 'bout that team, ain't you?

"My God, Taylor, don't you know nothin'? This here was a good team, too. Never seen 'em myself, but I knowed a chore boy who worked for Paul th' winter of th' blue snow, an' he was a-tellin' as how little Babe was four axe-handles wide atween th' eyes—"

He spit and wiped his chin.

"One day when Paul was loggin' off section thirty-seven, he was feedin' th' mules an' he sees what looks like a good-sized kernel of corn. Might' good-sized kernel, all right. Paul, he was allus lookin' atter good things, so he stuck her in his vest pocket an' didn't give it to th' mules.

"Atter dinner he was rummagin' round fer a tooth-pick an' locates this here kernel o' corn. He was out behint th' barn jus' then an' so he kicks a hole in th' ground an' plants her—

"That was th' big barn. See, Paul he kep' a lotta teams on th' haul which meant pret' big barn. Big job, cleanin' this here barn an' Paul was great for this—now, efficiency. So he had th' barn set on wheels an' moved it along every day, 'stead of acleanin' her out.

"That night a settler drives in to talk to Paul 'bout some cord wood. He was thar awhile an' 'long 'bout dusk he goes out fer to start home—

"In a minute he was back an' says to Paul that his team's got away.

"'So'? says Paul, 'Where'd you leave 'em?'

"'Out tied to that air telephone pole behint your barn," gesturing.

"'They ain't no telephone pole thar,' says Paul.

"'Sure they is,' says the settler.

"So Paul goes out to investigate. He an' th' settler walks aroun' behint th' barn an' th' settler says to look thar; thar she is. Paul looks an' blinks because b' God, his corn had sprouted an' this here telephone pole was his cornstalk!

"Well, it was a pret' high cornstalk by then an' Paul leans back to look up an' see how high it was an', b' gosh, what's he see but that air team an' wagon belongin' to th' settler away up thar, most outta sight. Th' stalk had growed up an' took th' whole shebang along!

"Now Paul he knowed he's got fer to get this here team down, so he sends fer Swede Charley an' says, 'Charley, you climb up an' ontie that air team.'

"So Charley he spits on his hands an' starts up. Darn good climber, Charley; he climbs pret' darn fast, an' he gits away up thar an' then they see him makin' funny motions, wavin' his arms an' such, an' th' boys begin to wonder what's up.

"Well, Paul he figgers it out. Charley can't make it an' 's tryin' to slide down, but this gol-darn stock's growin' up faster 'n he can slide down an' he keeps right on goin' outta sight."

He paused and pulled twice at his pipe, ignoring the mirth about him.

"Now, this 's pret' serious, thinks Paul, Swede Charley up thar an' goin' higher; what's goin' to happen to him? He'll starve, won't he?

"So Paul runs to th' cook shanty an' gits a lotta biscuits an' into th' van where he keeps his shot gun.

"Pret' good gun, this here one of Paul's. Fair-sized gun, too. Paul he used to load each bar'l with a dish pan full of powder an' brick bats an' he'd shoot her first east an' if he didn't git game thar, he'd shoot her west; allus got game one place or t'other.

"So Paul loads her with biscuits an' shoots both bar'ls up toward where Charley's went, most outta sight by then. And they knowed Charley 'd have somethin' to eat ontil they could git him down.

"Th' settler he walks home an' Paul he goes to bed, thinkin' 'bout that air team an' Charley. Nothin' he can do till mornin' but when mornin' comes, th' top of that stalk, th' team an' Charley is all clean outta sight—

"Paul he gits right worried. Atter a few days they commences to find dead crows in th' swamp. Crows kep' fallin' down plumb dead an' nothin' but skin an' bones. Lot o' crows. Paul he figgers that air out, too. This here team's died up thar an' th' crows has started up atter 'em for a nice meal, but they 's starved to death on th' way!"

Taylor glanced at the battered clock. It was after one.

"Now this here cornstalk gives no sign of slowin' up. She grows over ag'in' the barn an' they have fer to put th' barn on another set o' wheels so's it'll run sideways. Then she grows ag'in' th' men's shanty an' they has to put that on wheels too, an' th' cornstalk keeps crowdin' 'em apart ontil they has to string a telephone line atween th' barn an' shanty to communicate ready-like.

"Paul he's pret' worried. Never seen nothin' like this here afore. One day a man drives into camp with a feather in his hat an' gold buttons on his coat an' solid gold medals on his chist an' gold things on his shoulders. He's got a sword an' stripes on his pants an' shiny boots an' he carried a big paper all stuck over with red sealin' wax an' blue ribbins. He walks up to Paul.

"'You Mister Bunion?' he asks, an' Paul he 'lows how he is. 'Well I gotta warrant for your arrest from Congress,' he says.

"'Warrant?' says Paul, surprised-like. 'From Congress? What for? An' who are you?'

"'I'm th' Admiral of th' Navy,' says th' gent, 'An' this here cornstalk 's got its roots into Lake Huron on one side an' Lake Michigan on th' other an' she is suckin' the water up so fast that all th' boats is aground!'

"Now Paul, he ain't no mean talker, so he argufies with this here Admiral an' promises him he'll get this here cornstalk out th' way. Th' Admiral he don't want to leave it that way, but Paul he's done a lotta loggin' fer Congress, y' know, an' he stands pret' well. Yup. He logged off North Dakoty. See, when th' Governor who was a reformed Swede found out th' King o' Sweden was drivin' all th' good farmers out an' that they was comin' over here, he wants 'em in Dakoty. But they wa'n't no place for 'em, then, so th' governor gits Congress to say it'll log off th' state an' Congress gives th' contrack to Paul an' makes good, which gives him a pret' fair stand-in—

"Well the Admiral he goes off an' Paul, he sets down to think. He's gotta cut that damn cornstalk down somehow, but it's a big job. He thinks an thinks an' then he sends for th' Tie-Cuttin' Finn an' says—

"Tie-Cuttin Finn? Never heerd tell on him?"

He clicked his tongue in disgust and sighed.

"Well this here Finn, he was th' best broad-axe man Paul ever had, but he ain't quite so good as Paul wants at that, him havin' a big tie contrack. So Paul he gits an idea. He rigs a thirty-pound broad-axe on each of th' Finn's feet like skates." He drew up a foot to illustrate. "Straps 'em on good an' solid. Then th' Finn goes into th' cedar swamp. He goes up a tree, usin' these here axes for climbers, scores goin' up, gits to th' top, slides down, hewes two faces on th' way an' knocks off a tie every eight feet—"

Taylor did not laugh with the others. He looked again at the clock. It was quarter after one.

"Well Paul, he calls in th' Tie-Cuttin' Finn an' tells him to pick out fifty of th' likeliest-lookin' broad-axe men in camp, which th' Finn does. He takes 'em into th' swamp an' fer a month he teaches 'em ontil he's got fifty of th' best axe-men that ever spit on a hand.

"Then one mornin' bright an' early they all come out, axes all sharp, stripped to their shirts an' lines up roun' th' cornstalk.

"Paul he gits the dinner horn from th' cook shanty—Ever hear 'bout that dinner horn? Nope? Huh! Well she's a good one. Has to have a good one y' know, 'cause he runs a big camp an' th' men git scattered a long ways by dinner time, but nobody but Paul can blow this here horn. The sound carries all right when Paul blows her, but it's kinda expensive 'cause every time he blows he knocks down 'bout 'leven acres of standin' timber.

"Well, Paul, he gits these here men all strung 'round th' cornstalk an' he blows th' horn for 'em to start. They slam into th' stalk good an' heavy, fifty of 'em, each sinkin' his axe to th' eye—but—" He sighed and paused. "You see, their choppin' don't do a dime's worth of good, 'cause this here damn stalk grows so fast that they can't hit twice in th' same place to git a chip off."

Joe scowled and rubbed his chin.

"Bad," he muttered. "Pret' bad, with Congress waitin' fer to arrest Paul an' ruin his reppetation.

"So Paul, he does some more thinkin'. Now you recalled 'bout Paul's big saw mill. Pret' good-sized mill. Right fair mill. She'd cut a million feet an hour. To keep this mill in logs he had to build a pret' good railroad. Light steel wouldn't stand his trains 'cause they had to load fairly heavy, so Paul had some special steel made, mite heavier 'n anythin' they'd ever used loggin'. Each rail was a quarter-mile long an' a foot square on th' end.

"Now this road, good as she was, couldn't quite keep th' mill in logs. The' was a Scotchman engineer on th' loggin' train an' he used to roll 'em in pret' fast, but Paul he ain't satisfied, an' he laces into th' Scotchman one day an' tells it to him good an' hard an' says to put on a little steam, wood's cheap, an' travel some. That made the engineer mad—'cause he thought he'd been doin' pret' good. So when he goes out with his empties to th' bankin' ground he opens her wide an' she goes so damn fast that th' draft picks up th' steel an' ties an' rolls 'em up behint an' over th' way car ontil railroad, train an' everythin' 's junk.

"Now that air railroad she was Paul's first big failure; gettin' rid of this here cornstalk 's th' other. So he natterly thinks 'bout both, an' that gives him 'n idee. He goes over to this here junk pile an' commences pullin' her apart.

"Quite a job, with them quarter-mile rails, but by-an'-by he gits a few pulled loose an' straightened out an' puts 'em over his shoulder an' walks back to camp.

"That evenin' atter supper he takes a look at th' cornstalk, which is a right good-sized stalk by then. He takes these here rails an' knots 'em together, strings 'em aroun' th' stalk, ties 'em up tight in a knot an' stands back an' says: 'There, durn ye, pinch yerself off!' Which the stalk perceeds to do."

Harris relighted his cigar with a hand that trembled.

"Well she pinches all right. They can hear her crackin' over in Wisconsin.

"Then Paul he thinks to hisself, what 'll happen when she comes down?

"So he sends fer his surveyor an' puts him out 'n th' brush with his transit to watch th' top of this here cornstalk. They strings a telephone line out to th' place an' th' surveyor camps there. Th' stalk keeps growin' an' snappin' an' atter a while th' surveyor he telephones an' says she's commencin' to sag.

"Paul he sends his men out into th' clearin' to warn th' settlers an' gets 'em all outen th' way. Everybody's pret' much excited.

"'She's commencin' to sag somethin' bad,' telephones th' surveyor. Everybody gits away back—an' looks—They can see her quiver an' quake an' by-'n-by they can hear her top whistlin'."

He spat.

"Yes, sir, they heerd that top whistlin' four days afore she hit th' ground!"

He stopped with a nod and tightening of his lips. Harris rocked with laughter. Taylor, though, was very serious and looked again at the clock. A half hour had passed.

"Four days," repeated Joe, seriously. "An' no wonder! Why, Paul, he figgered out that about a mile 'n half of that air top had frazzeled out on th' way down!

"They went out to look th' thing over atter she was safe down an' up pret' well toward what was left of th' top end they found 'n ear of corn. Pret' sizeable ear, this here was, and it was druv straight into th' ground by th' stalk.

"Paul he scratched his head an' thinks he better git that air ear out. So he goes gits th' mule team 'nd builds a stump puller. He has to build a pret' big stump puller all right. He rigs her up good an' strong an' hooks on th' mules an' pulls on that cob an' when he gits her up he has 'n eighty foot well, all cobbled up with kernels."

Harris leaned against the door and his eyes swam with tears as he laughed.

Joe looked at Taylor and the young man nodded—after he had glanced into the street—toward the court house. At that Black Joe got up and drew a paper of tobacco from his pocket.

"Joe, that's a good yarn," said Harris, drawing a handkerchief to wipe his eyes.

"Yup, Paul was quite a lad. He never let anythin' interfere with his work."

"More than I've done," sliding his watch to a big palm. "I'm overdue—a half hour!"

Still chuckling, making brief farewells, he departed. Joe and Taylor watched him swing along the board sidewalk. They could see the supervisors through the open window of their room—and one figure was in the street, the figure that John had seen as Joe brought his story to a finish: Humphrey Bryant, walking slowly from the court house toward the Banner office, slowly but not like an old man—with a spring in his stride, and his thin plume of white hair waved triumphantly above his scalp.

CHAPTER XXI

Humphrey Bryant had not eaten, had not left his desk. He watched the supervisors trail toward the Commercial House with Jim Harris in the lead, watched the town merchants one by one lock their doors and go home for dinner—and then sat there, staring blankly at the picture of Pingree on the blue calcimined wall.

He was not conscious that so much time passed. Time seemed to speed that day, drawing events after it in a dizzying swirl, portentous events, carrying great consequence for him and Helen Foraker beneath their surface, and he roused with a start as Sim Burns strolled along the walk on his way back from dinner. Wes Hubbard was behind him and Art Billings and the others. Finally Henry Wales, fretting with his pale cigar, hastened along as the clock on Bryant's office wall struck one.

The old man rose and went to the door. Through the open court house window he saw the supervisors moving about their room—he watched and waited. Jim Harris did not emerge from the poolroom.

Bareheaded he crossed the street, breath a trifle short, heart thumping.

The aimless chatter of the group frazzled to a tell-tale silence as the editor appeared in the doorway. He stood a moment, counting them. Each township was represented. He stepped inside, drawing the door shut behind him and stood with his hand on the knob. His white, stiff-bosomed shirt was open at the throat, his vest unbuttoned.

"Gentlemen," he said, and bowed.

They were all old men, except Sim; some white headed, some grizzled; some withered, a few portly; of the old order in body and thought.

Wes Hubbard took his feet from the chairman's desk.

"Mornin' Hump'," he said and picked up the gavel. "Lookin' for a piece for th' Banner?"

There was something malicious in the casual question.

"Yes, for the Banner—perhaps."

"Ought to make a good write-up. We're goin' to resolute for a new court house an' for lots of roads this afternoon."

"That's commendable. We've managed to stagger along with the old tin shack and our sand trails for quite a while.

"You think, do you gentlemen, that the electorate will vote the bonds?"

"Sure thing!" It was Sim Burns, rather defensive in his manner. "Why shouldn't they?"

The editor shrugged. His blue eyes were very bright, but unsmiling; very quick in their darting from face to face, but not shifting—just prying, roving, alive and alert.

"There's only one thing to stand in the way," he said, "Taxes."

Wes Hubbard rose.

"I guess that th' people understand pretty well that th' country's goin' to be better fixed for funds."

"That's why I came over, gentlemen, to ask, as a representative of the press, about the revised assessments."

There was a stir in the group; men drew closer together.

"That'll come out when th' boards of review meet."

"And maybe it'll come out sooner!" There was a snap to the old editor's voice; he moved a step nearer the faces which had slowly formed in a group before him. The attitudes of lounging had given way to a tensity—like the tensity of his own manner. "I want to know who's going to pay the bill."

Some one coughed. Henry Wales sniffed and eyed his cigar.

"That's all fixed, Hump," Hubbard said. "There won't be any hardship for anybody that ain't got it comin'."

"Let's understand one another, gentlemen. Let's get down to brass tacks. I understand that the valuation on Foraker's Folly is to be raised until the sum realized will pay interest and create sinking funds for all these bonds."

Sim Burns snapped: "No more 'n fair! No more 'n legal; I've only followed the law in makin' my assessment."

The editor's blue eye whipped to him. "Only followed what law?"

"State tax law," color mounting, lower lip drooping. "You stood by Foraker; you stood by his girl. You believed they could grow timber out there an' they have. Now do you want to stand between 'em an' th' bill for that privilege? Want to be a party to defrauding the people of this county out of their just tax income?"

There was menace in him as he stepped forward, fists half clenched. Others glanced at him as though his challenge gave them assurance.

"You, Burns, and all of you know my attitude on the matter of taxing timber. There's no need of discussing that. I'm here to discuss a matter of justice."

"Justice!" scoffed Sim. "Justice? You think it's fair for a big rich property like that to get out of paying its share?"

"I think it is illegal for any large interest to shirk its share of public expense. I think it is criminal for tax officers to aid and abet any interest in avoiding its just burden. That is why I have come—on a matter of justice."

He moved forward again and drew his pudgy figure up. His face was flushed, his eyes flashing cold fire. He seemed to grow in stature as his voice mounted. The old man poised there, face to face with Burns, and then let his gaze travel the group, as though finished with the one man. The silence was acute. A fly, bumping against the window, sounded large in it. There was portent in the gesture of Bryant's half-lifted hand.

He relaxed suddenly, and a smile ran down into his beard.

"Understand me, gentlemen, I came not as a trouble maker, not as a kicker against improvements, but on a simple matter of simple justice. The people of this country understand your plan thoroughly. Foraker's Folly is to pay the bill for these improvements. Chief Pontiac Power and Jim Harris are to benefit by them directly, and the people are to benefit by boasting a new public building.

"I want to call your attention to this fact; Chief Pontiac Power, all its holdings, its three dams, its three power plants, its flowage rights, its unused key positions, its monopoly of the power possibilities in this country, its subsidiary, the Harris Development Company, is assessed at a valuation of two hundred thousand."

He paused and his eyes sought the face of Art Billings which had paled suddenly and who seemed to shrink from Bryant's scrutiny.

"I haven't heard you making a noise about raising the assessment of Chief Pontiac in your township to a cash-value basis, Art!"

Even the fly was silent.

The blue eyes swept the faces again and the editor's voice rose a bit, not quite steady, as he strove to hold his anger down.

"I haven't heard any of you objecting to the low assessment of this corporation, which, as any of us know, will run over six million dollars cash value! More, market value! I've heard a mighty roar against Foraker's Folly; I haven't heard a whisper against Chief Pontiac—I'm not going to discuss this; I'm not going to ask you why?" a ripple of relief ran over the group. "I'm going to tell you why!"

His voice had leaped to a roar and his hand went quickly to his pocket, bringing forth the worn notebook. The silence was painful as he drew down his spectacles from his forehead and fumbled the pages.

"I have here memoranda which interests me, and will interest you, and will interest perhaps—perhaps, the electorate, perhaps the tax commission, perhaps the prosecuting attorney of this county if properly urged by the governor of our great state."

He looked into the book.

"I read at random: At the top of the page, I find this date: January 4, 1915. Below is written the name of Oliver Burns, uncle of the present supervisor from Lincoln township, veteran member of this body until his death. In the next column is written the time, 1.32 p.m.; which means at that moment he entered the Commercial House and ascended the stairs to the room of Jim Harris, local representative of a great corporation." He paused, for his throat had tightened. He looked about almost fiercely but the amazement in those faces gave him strength.

"I turn, the pages. The date is August 9, 1917. The first name is again Oliver Burns; the hour is 9.16 a.m. and he went up to the same place, up the same stairs to the same room, still occupied by Jim Harris, local representative of Chief Pontiac Power.

"The next notation is 9.47 a.m. and the name opposite is Wes Hubbard; the next is twenty minutes to eleven and the name is Art Billings. The next was Oren Culman at eleven four, and so on.

"Try another page: March 5, 1918. Art Billings was early, at 8.22. Until after eleven Mr. Harris had no callers, but he remained in his room waiting, looking through the window now and then. At three minutes past eleven Wes Hubbard went up the stairs, at 11.22 Oliver Burns, and at one minute to noon, Oren Culman.

"And so on, with little change, until April 6, 1920 when a new name appears: that of Sim Burns."

He stopped, jaw trembling.

"You are all there, gentlemen, on every page—"

Those who watched thought that the quivering of his jaw and the tremor in his voice was the unsteadiness of righteous wrath; but it was not that, not by far. It was misgiving. Like a stud-poker player he let them look at the high cards which lay face up—but the one in the hole—the one on which he was risking his stack, was an unknown quantity to him—and for all he knew it might be a marked card and recognizable to these men.

Slowly he closed the book and stood with it between his palms. No word of reply came for an instant and then Sim Burns spoke.

"You've mentioned my uncle's name." His voice was thin. "You'd accuse the dead of takin' Chief Pontiac's money? You'd slander the dead?"

The editor's heart pelted at his ribs. He had wrung it from them!

"The dead? Aye, the dead! And the living, equally smirched, will stand for it!" he cried, and his hand clutching the notebook lashed out in a furious gesture as he stepped backward to fling open the door.

"Two columns of these notes I've read, gentlemen. Do you want me to read the third? Do you want me to shout down these halls the exact value of your thirty pieces of silver? The price that Chief Pontiac has paid and that you have accepted so the people of this country might be defrauded to help a great corporation?"

A movement, sharp and quick and certain as Wes Hubbard skipped from the chairman's platform.

"Shut up, Bryant!" he panted. "Hold your mouth!"

His voice was husky and he trembled as he backed against the door to close it.

The old man did not look at him. He pushed his spectacles upward and his eyes firm, assured and penetrating, ran from face to face slowly before he turned to look at the chairman who stood there, pale and shrunken.

"If I don't choose to shut up? What then?"

"I'll—we'll—," stammered Hubbard, floundering for a threat.

"You'll go, every last one of you, to a larger, finer building than this; but it's a tighter building, more imposing than any your bonds would have built; and as for roads—you may build them with your hands, you blackguards!"

The epithet popped from his lips and he moved forward. This brought him in line with the window and from the poolroom he saw Jim Harris emerge, hat back, face red with laughter.

"We understand one another," he said, halting. "I came on an errand of justice. I am leaving now. If Chief Pontiac wants to bear its equitable share of taxation for the fruits that it will enjoy, I have no argument. Chief Pontiac Power does not want to be fair, gentlemen. You've put yourself in the hands of rascals. Vote these resolutions this afternoon that mean the ruin of Foraker's Folly—and," he gave the notebook just the suggestion of a brandish.

"Otherwise, the matter of the value of your pieces of silver—may wait."

He went from the room with no further word and his feet echoed on the light boards of the stairway as he descended. Until he was gone from the building, no man stirred.

"Here comes Jim," rasped Art Billings.

"I move we adjourn!" This in a whisper from Sim Burns.

"You can't adjourn; we ain't been called to order," mumbled Hubbard.

"To hell with that!" cried Sim. "He's got it on us, th' old basterd! Do you all want to rot in jail? Clear out before Harris gets here or you'll be hoppin' from the fryin' pan into th' coals!"

They went with a thundering of feet down the stairway and scattered in the dusty thoroughfare of Pancake.

Jim Harris stopped and watched them go.

"All through?" he asked Henry Wales.

"Through—er—you see, Jim—"

Briefly and nervously the landlord told his guest the story, and Harris' face darkened. He made no threats then, for he knew that like mercy, corruption touches him who gives and him who receives. He stood still, gazing blankly at the office of the Blueberry Banner.

Hump Bryant was at the telephone, tongue roving his lip, eyes smiling happily as he listened to the glad response of Helen Foraker.

"How'd it happen?" he asked. "Lord knows—I guess He had a hand in it, my dear—

CHAPTER XXIII

Taylor and Black Joe were back in the forest by late afternoon. Helen was gone.

They went first to the men's shanty where Joe removed the worn and shabby suit he kept for such a rare event as a trip to Pancake and was struggling into overalls and a work shirt when John, importuned by Bobby to come and fix his see-saw, started toward the big house. Joe paused in his dressing.

"Say!" John stopped. Joe cleared his throat unnecessarily. "Tell her," he growled, "that I went to town an' that I'm back."

His voice was gruffer than ever, but John smiled as he walked away. Joe, who would not even speak to the sour Aunty May, sending her this trivial message of his well being!

He busied himself with the board and horse which made the children's teeter and saw Aunty May come to the door, mixing bowl on her hip, and glance at the children briefly, and look at length toward the men's shanty. She did this again and a third time; on her next appearance she came outside.

"Helen went to town," she volunteered.

"Yes?"

"Hump Bryant telephoned some news that made her glad. She's gone to bring him out for Sunday with the children. They don't see their Grandpa Humpy much." Taylor worked on. "You've been away most all day," she said. He had, he admitted. "Your logs most cut?" They were. "I s'pose you have to go to town a lot, now." Yes, he had been in today.

She talked with the manner of one whose mind is not just on what she says, and her eyes went from time to time to the men's shanty.

"That's one advantage of bein' an ornery man. You c'n pick up an' git out when you will." Taylor remonstrated that men, at times, had obligations. "But when you're free you gen'ally can find some one to bum with—Now a woman, she don't like to go to town alone."

And so on, edging close to the question which was uppermost in her mind, inspecting Taylor's work with an interest that was obviously assumed. John, watching, finally said:

"We were lucky today. Caught the down freight and got a ride back to Seven Mile with Dr. Pelly."

"Oh, so you didn't go alone?"

"No, Joe and I went in."

"An' three of you rode in that one-seated car of the doctor's?"

"Plenty of room. Yes we all came back—"

Forthwith, she departed for the kitchen with the alacrity of relief and Taylor chuckled. He heard her singing a doleful hymn in a terrible contralto.

Both funny and heartbreaking, it was, as Helen had said. Sour Aunty May, crusty Black Joe; they would not speak, but the first thought of each was for the other's welfare.

Humphrey Bryant came back with Helen that night and John joined them and listened to the old editor's modest recital of what had taken place in the court house. He saw Helen's relief, detected the justified pride that the old man took in thwarting Harris' carefully conceived plan. He listened, smiling, on the verge of telling the part he had played and which no one knew but Black Joe—the most important part in that day's vicory—when Helen checked her laughter and sighed.

"It's only the skirmish. The real fight is to come."

And then they talked seriously of what awaited their wits and courage. Again Taylor detected that unyielding temper in the girl, stirred against any man or influence that menaced her forest. It was, tonight, as though Jim Harris and the others sought her very life; she planned and talked that tensely.

Ezam Grainger had gone, the new bank cashier, one young Wilcox, had arrived the day before. Ezam's mind had been so taken up with his wife's trouble that he had no time for the troubles of others. He had been sorry, but he could do nothing for Helen himself surely, he thought, the new man would renew the mortgage; perhaps later he might aid himself, if help were still needed.

But that day Helen Foraker's chief ally had defied Pontiac Power and the corporation would go out of its way not at all to help carry on the dream of eternal pine. Humphrey was going down state the first of the week to hunt an investor. Outwardly he was optimistic, but he could not cover his misgiving and when Helen indicated the headlines in a Detroit paper heralding the sharp credit stringency, his pleasant assurance lost its ring entirely.

They talked for a long time and when Taylor went out Helen followed him down the steps. Bryant's eyes followed, too, with a smile not untouched by sadness.

Sunday.

The children, one at either hand drew Grandpa Humpy away to inspect a nest of hatching chicks and John, beside Helen, strolled down the river to sit on the bank and finally stretch out beside her on the needles and stare up into the pine crowns and talk—rather constrainedly.

Last night he had intended to tell her of his father's plan; he had put it off because of lack of opportunity. This morning the flush of yesterday's victory died before other grave problems. She had troubles enough; tonight he would talk to Rowe. Tomorrow would do—and perhaps tonight's interview would yield the hope that this obstacle need not be faced—such was the easier way!

There was their moment of love making when half reclining on the sweet needles he held her close to him and felt her hand stroking his head and heard her say that she needed him, that big as the forest was in her reason for living it would be small, now, without this other thing which had come into her heart. He wanted to blurt out his story of yesterday, of how he had held Jim Harris and opened the way for Humphrey's strategy, but he was not given to boasting; he was reticent; better to wait with his tales of allegiance until he could be sure that his unthinking enthusiasm, his desire to help her, had not brought her face to face with an unbeatable enemy.

They went bade together, his elbow touching her side. Goddard, on lookout in Watch Pine—for the fair days had dried the country and distant brush fires sent up wraiths of pale smoke—saw them come as he had seen them go. His hand clutched the battered field glasses and his knee against the rail of the crow's nest trembled.

Philip Rowe had arrived that morning and was in his room at dusk when John's knuckles fell on the door. He received his caller, deferential, suave, courteous, but now there was open irony in his manner and voice as he bade Taylor be seated beside the table which was littered with reports that Tolman had made, for the cruiser had gone back to the forest after that telephone conversation with old Luke and covered its most remote parts thoroughly.

No words were bandied this time. Taylor came to the point at once.

"Evidently I started the thing that I was trying to make impossible."

Rowe shrugged and smoked deliberately.

"Your father never did fancy long-time investments; and he's a bit touchy on any matter of conservation. It doesn't sound practical to him."

"Did you tell him what I told you about the work that this pine represents, about the fact that a girl has been carrying the load alone?"

He put that question sharply and Rowe's gaze locked with his; the lip over his cigar moved slightly.

"I told him everything you said, Taylor," defensively. "Are you thinking that I deliberately caused trouble between you and your father?"

There was bravado in that question, a show of fearless frankness, which did not sound real. Quickly Taylor reflected; Rowe had been close to his father and Marcia Murray more than once intimated that his position might be dangerous. Memory of those hints stirred dormant suspicion and as he looked into the glitter of the eyes that clung to his John believed that he had grounds for that misgiving.

"No I don't think that, yet, Rowe."

"Meaning that you think that you will think it!" laughing.

"Perhaps."

Rowe laughed again.

"There's no need of your losing your temper because you made your father lose his," he said. "You've a good opportunity here yet. You and your father don't think alike on a great many things; there's no point on which you could differ any more than on this pine deal. No use trying to impress you with his appetite for Michigan pine. You understand that as well as I do. Perhaps there is one thing about him you don't realize and that is that when it comes to a deal involving something he wants and which somebody else wants, too, he's a steam roller! He has the money, he has the determination, and he has—damned little regard for what other people want.

"He wants this pine. We've looked it over carefully, not only the timber but its backing. That backing is damned shaky. Taylor, I understand there was a little inside political excitement yesterday and Miss Foraker won. Well, that's only a stop-gap. These fellows have the law with them and in the end, which isn't very far away, they'll get her.

"There's another thing. This bank holds a mortgage for twenty thousand on a part of the forest and there's no chance of their renewing it. She can't get the money anywhere else unless she's got better credit than most of us, and the foreclosure will pretty well upset her scheme for logging as you outlined it the other day. And there are other things, several—" He paused and eyed his cigar. "You've never liked me very well, Taylor; I've known it. I'm now in a position to make you or break you as far as your future with your father is concerned. I have full authority to act for him on this matter and if you doubt it, try to get in touch with him either by telephone or by a trip home." He paused to let that sink in.

"I don't want to do anything that's unfair." He eyed the tendril of cigar smoke. Some one entered the next room. Muffled voices, which neither of them heeded. "If you want to come in on this deal with us, see it from your father's way and help, it may do a lot to re-establish you in his favor. Just now, you're not worth a white chip. He has a pretty good reason to believe, too, that you're somewhat prejudiced by your interest in Miss Foraker."

His manner was stinging and John rose.

"We'll leave Miss Foraker out of this," he said sharply.

Rowe's brows lifted. The voices in the next rooom broke off.

"What influence she has on me is none of your affair and none of my father's. We're talking a timber deal; not something personal. The girl concerns only me. It was my idea and I am going to insist on having things my way if I go in at all.

"I came up here, I saw the timber and its possibilities. Why, there's money in it, Rowe, lots of money for my father and for me! The fact that Miss Foraker is in a pinch gives us a chance to be in on the deal at all. If she weren't pressed for money we'd never get in. I want to do this, Rowe, as much as my father ever wanted to cut pine in his life. I can't do it alone. I need his help and understanding.

"You can help me in this if you will. You have the authority to act for my father. You're on the ground. You have cruiser's report on the values. I make this sporting proposition to you: Help me out, interest my father in the plan I've put up to you and we'll pull together in a combination that can't lose.

"The timber's there; you can't get away from that; she's grown it to saw-log size. She's done it alone and she's reached the end of her rope. Look at the thing from my point of view. Get behind me with my father's money and I'll stake everything I hold dear on the bet that we'll clean up."

He stopped rather breathless. Rowe cleared his throat. From the other room the sound of footsteps, a closing door. Men went down the hall.

"And suppose I tell you I am not interested in seeing it your way any more than your father is?"

"Then it will be up to me to fight you both!"

A gleam of triumph swept Rowe's face. "You mean that? That you will fight your father in this thing?"

"You heard me!"

"And you want me to tell him this?" leaning forward in his chair. "You want me to tell him that you will actually fight him? That you will not even stand aside?"

Color flooded Taylor's face. "Tell him just that," he muttered. "Tell him that I have made my choice, that I stand by the forest. I don't relish fighting him—but I'm ready to go the limit. That's final, Rowe. That's all I have to say."

The other rose and put down his cigar.

"It will interest him," he said ironically. "It will interest him more than anything has since you first mentioned the timber. I—" his eyes ran over Taylor's face craftily. "I will go back tonight with your message. Beyond a doubt you will hear of it—and before long."

They stood silent a moment.

"Then we understand each other," said Taylor and with no more took his hat and walked out. He went down the stairs, down the steps and along the walk. He did not notice the two figures on the hotel verandah, two men who stopped talking when he came out and watched him go. He was in a swirl of impulses. Go to Detroit and face his father? No, that would do no good. Stay here, confide in Helen, summon Humphrey Bryant and plan their campaign of resistance? Or think it out himself? There was time—and he again shrank from the ordeal of making Helen know what he had brought upon her by trying to help.

In his room Phil Rowe lighted a fresh cigar, looked at his reflection in the faulty mirror and smiled.

"That makes it very simple." He laughed nervously. "John Taylor—as an heir, you're a wash-out—and as for this other, I'll strike so quick you'll not get your breath!"

On the verandah Milt Goddard leaned closer to Jim Harris.

"I knew it all along, " he said, thickly, watching Taylor. "I knew he wasn't on the level and didn't mean any good by her."

"Course, it's none of my business, Milt, but I never like to see a square girl get taken in. Miss Foraker don't like me, thinks I don't like her, but maybe she'll wake up and find out who her friends are—some day."

He sighed in satisfaction and half closed his eyes and scarcely heard Goddard's heavy threats, made against Taylor.

All last night Harris had lain awake, trying to determine just what had struck his plan yesterday to knock it into a cocked hat. Humphrey Bryant had been the agency, yes, but there was something else, he felt, something beneath the surface.

His day had been replete with serious conversations. First had been one with Rowe in which names and figures and details were discussed. Then he had summoned the boy Lucius and talked gravely to him—so gravely and earnestly that the lad's eyes bulged and when he left Jim's room he walked with the bearing of one who is excited by great responsibility. And then he talked with Henry Wales, his good nature giving way to hardness; Sim Burns came to see him and they were locked up for an hour.

These conferences were followed by a gossipy journey up and down the street ending in the poolroom where the proprietor laughed with him over Black Joe's Bunion story; but in the midst of the laugh Harris sobered and smoked a moment and asked questions—about Black Joe's coming, about young Taylor; and when he learned that they had asked about his cigars and his habits the other man said:

"That Taylor's a funny cuss, ain't he? Yesterday he seemed more interested in the clock than he did in what Joe had to say."

"Yes, he—huh? The clock!" Harris stared blankly at the other a moment and then picked the band from his cigar carefully.

"By the way, Jim, what's this story about the Foraker girl gettin' Hump' to sit on the road and court house plans?"

"All rot! There's a kink in the tax law they brought up," he lied, "and they're tryin' to dodge taxes, but they'll never get away with it; not while I'm interested to see the country prosper."

"Dirty work, eh? Is that so! Always knew Hump was a nut, but never s'posed he was crooked."

"No, none of you ever did. He makes a dog's hind leg look like a straight line. But wait—you wait. Somethin's going to drop!"

Shortly thereafter he walked out and as he passed the Banner office he looked at the litter behind the dusty windows malevolently.

"You're one, Hump' Bryant—and young Taylor makes two—I'll get you as sure as water runs down hill!"

It was dusk when John and Bryant and Goddard drove into town. Harris watched them from the hotel verandah, studying Milt's sullen manner toward young Taylor. He knew men and motives, did Harris. Little of the bearing of men escaped him, because frictions were the material with which he could always work.

Taylor went into the hotel and Goddard came to sit beside Harris. Later they also went upstairs, for Harris had something important to say to the big woodsman. He did not need to say it, however, the long arm of coincidence reached out that evening and drew four men together, and through the thin partition Milt Goddard heard from Taylor's own lips all that Harris had wanted to tell him. After that they went down to the verandah and smoked again—and the work was done.

Harris smiled contentedly when Goddard walked away to join Taylor and drive back to the forest.

Milt scarcely spoke on the trip, but watched John carefully, patient and planning. He had given an empty warning to Helen and now backing for it had fallen, as it were, from the sky. He would not strike too quickly! He would let this upstart go to the end of his rope and bring him up sharply! Helen Foraker would know whom she could trust!

Two long-distance calls went out of Pancake that evening, the one to Luke Taylor and the other to Marcia Murray at Windigo Lodge, and when they were both accomplished Rowe went to drive with Harris. While they rolled slowly down the river road Rowe listened, rather startled at times, but always reassured by what his companion had to say.

"I'd figured I might have trouble with Milt, but it was as easy as kissin' a pretty girl. For years he's been sweet on her; he's been green-eyed ever since Taylor got the inside track.

"S' help me, I didn't know you and Taylor were upstairs! But Goddard stood in my room and heard with his own ears the young cub beg you for help—and it sounded just like he wanted to cut that pine himself, the way he put it! Better than any lie I could have thought up! Oh-ho, that's rich!"

"But you got him out just in time."

"Lord, it had my heart in my throat! I couldn't hustle him out fast enough. I figured any minute the kid 'uld blow up and cuss you out."

Further on:

"But won't Goddard blow to Miss Foraker?" Rowe asked.

"Hell, maybe Taylor will himself. But there's a bigger chance that Goddard suspects Taylor is on his dad's side and if we can get 'em fighting among themselves, it'll be all down hill and shady.

"I tell you, Rowe, you don't want to underestimate the kid! He put one over on me Saturday and if we don't scotch him he'll make more trouble—but he's gone on the girl, and she's a bug about that pine of hers, and Goddard is nuts about her and jealous of Taylor and thinks Taylor is tryin' to force her to sell—and there you are!

"The iron is hot, my friend. Better grab your hammer!"

"He thinks I'm going back to Detroit tonight. But there'll be no grass under my feet! I'll talk to her before the dew's dry in the morning!"

CHAPTER XXIII

Philip Rowe's interview with Helen may be divided into two parts. The first is unimportant to this narrative. Keenly planned, adroitly manœuvered, he brought the talk up to the point of values and put his request for an option.

The man had aroused the girl's distrust from the beginning; he came unannounced, he was so low spoken, so sure; his eyes were so steady. She listened to what he had to say carefully, talking little, telling herself that he was trying to draw her out, while he appeared to be telling of himself and his wants.

"The forest isn't for sale," she said simply, when he stopped.

"So we have understood. But circumstances, I thought, might have changed your mind. We have all respect for your ability, but we realize that the load is becoming too much for one of limited resources to carry."

His oily assurance nettled her.

"I think I am the best judge of that."

He shrugged. "For instance, there is the matter of taxes."

"That is serious, of course, but state legislation is pending to remove that obstacle."

"One can never be certain, Miss Foraker, of the promises of politicians." She started to interrupt and said: "Our senator, Humphrey Bryant—" But he went on, looking hard into her eyes, "or the tenure of office of— statesmen Besides, you are in debt; your obligations are coming due and money is very hard to get on timber now." His tone was becoming ironical.

Helen sat back in her chair, feeling weak and dizzy. His manner pierced her assurance, his knowledge of her affairs shook her self-confidence.

"You know a great deal about my troubles," she said evenly.

He bowed his sleek head. "Business men no longer do business in the dark, Miss Foraker."

"But, when I tell you that the property isn't for sale—"

"It is not convincing." Beneath his suavity was something terrible, hard and brutal; he no longer smiled, but leaned forward intently.

"You're a young woman standing alone under a terrible burden. You have proven your point, that timber can be grown as a crop. That should satisfy you and you should let go. Your whole life is before you. It isn't proper that you should slave on here, headed straight for ruin. Besides," drily, "a man of powerful interests wants what you have created, is willing to pay you a good price, but he wants it. That is what counts with him, that is what should count with you, if you are—wise."

He lowered his voice on the last word and in its flatness was a suggested threat.

"I am sorry to disappoint him."

"He does not know what disappointment is." When her eyes widened at his statement he smiled for the first time. "He knows only triumph. He knows only how to win!"

Her color mounted. "Are you threatening me?"

He spread his hands in a gesture of humility. "Only trying to help you! Asking you to name your figure."

"And threatening me if I refuse!" Her voice was sharp and brittle and brought slow color to Rowe's face.

"You are too hasty, Miss Foraker."

"Too tardy, I should say. I don't care to sell, Mr. Rowe, and I have work to do."

She rose.

The man leaned back in his chair and smiled. "You have the courage to refuse a man who has all he wants but happiness and sees happiness in the possession of your forest?"

"I haven't the courage to give you what you want."

He looked narrowly at her then. She was beyond his experience, neither a grasping old maid, an empty-headed girl or the type of business woman he had ever encountered; young in years, old in experience and her manner carried a front that quite baffled him.

"I don't wholly understand you," he said, as though that did not matter, or as though it might flatter her, "and perhaps you don't understand me quite thoroughly.

"There are other factors involved. You've been doing a courageous but unwise thing by meddling in politics."

"Politics?"

"The story is coming out about Saturday's affair in the court house—oh, yes, I know about that too! Strangely, people throughout the county do not seem to think as you think that their supervisors are all scoundrels. They believe that there was black work from the other side, from you, Miss Foraker. They believe they have lost their chance at improvements through the efforts of Senator Bryant on your behalf. Their temper is not pleasant."

Helen smiled. "My work is still waiting. All this is interesting, but there's no use talking any more. I'm sure."

She moved toward the door with the poise and finality that sent a wave of anger through Rowe.

"Miss Foraker—"

"Please! Please, don't try to talk or argue. I don't like your half threats, Mr. Rowe. You don't frighten me—but it is unpleasant. As far as your coming here, I have told you that it is useless. I will not sell."

There was challenge in her gesture as she opened the screen door. He could not know that her legs were unsteady, her heart racing. He moved toward the step, hat in his hands, and stood beside her.

"I will leave you now," he said. "But I am coming again. Had your work been a little less—er—pressing, I might have told you more of what you face; but you're not interested anyhow, even though your back is to the wall."

He went out and did not look back.

The girl moved to the center of the room and stood there, hands at her sides, shoulders a bit slack, looking up at her father's picture above the bowl of wild roses on the mantel.

"Father?" weakly. "Father, I'm frightened! And he said I couldn't keep on and almost makes me—believe it!"

CHAPTER XXIV

Milt Goddard saw Philip Rowe's departure. He stepped out of the road to let his car pass and remained beside the ruts watching until it was out of sight.

Rowe could have come but from one place by that road and he hastened on to the big house under Watch Pine, At the door he paused a moment, irresolute, but when he stepped in and saw Helen at her desk his indecision departed; her head was bowed, arms about it and he saw her shudder. For the space of a dozen breaths he stood looking at the girl, sensing her trouble, but in his face appeared no sympathy—only joy!

"Helen, what is it?"

He stepped forward as she sat erect and rose, to walk toward the mantel.

"Nothing," she replied.

He was beside her.

"Don't put me off!" he said with the manner of one who is very certain of himself. "You've got to listen, now. Maybe if you'd listened when I tried to give you warning you wouldn't have been so upset this morning."

His assurance, his evident knowledge of what had happened, startled her.

"Warning? What do you mean? Do you know what has happened?"

"I don't know, but I can make a good guess; and to make a good guess a man has to know something!"

"You talked to—that man?"

"To Rowe?" He shook his head. "I've never spoken a word to him, but I know what he was here for." His mouth twisted in a half smile of triumph. The girl stood staring at him while voices came to them from the river: a sharp command and excited response, as the last of the hardwood logs swung round the bend. "He came to buy you out, didn't he?"

"Yes, I refused, of course, and he went away making threats. He knows all about us, Milt!"

"He knows all about us!" he echoed and laughed briefly. "And that's what I tried to tell you once and you wouldn't listen."

She caught her breath.

"I don't understand you."

Until then he had been tense, almost belligerent; but with her last words he relaxed and looked away, because he did not want her to detect his gladness. She was begging him, now, to reveal what he knew and the groundless warning which he had given weeks ago loomed large and real; Taylor was a traitor in her camp and he could prove it. With Taylor gone, with his own sagacity proven—It was a sweet moment for Milt Goddard!

The averting of his face set eyes toward the river. Taylor and two others worked to free a raft from the bend in which it had lodged. He saw John's lithe body put its strength to the pike pole, saw the logs sink beneath him as he shoved.

"Once you told me I was your good friend," he began. "You still think that, don't you, Helen?"

"Of course, Milt."

"It's the place of a man to look out for his friends, I take it. I've tried to look out for you, but you couldn't see it that way. You thought it was another thing."

His thumbs were hooked in his belt and he stood very close to her.

"I have worked for you, Helen, I've fought for you once or twice when it's been necessary. I've took all the interest any man could take in this forest when it's stood between you—and me. I told you once that sometimes I hated it. That's right. I do, sometimes. But I've kept on doing my best for it because you're right when you say it's your life. Anything that might harm this timber would be like somebody layin' hands on you and that's why I can stand it. If I've done that, ain't it right for you to expect that whatever I do is for your good? Ain't it reasonable for me to think that you'd—trust me?"

"I do trust you, I always—"

"Not always," he interrupted, voice rising slightly. "I tried to warn you once, but you put me off. It's been hard enough to keep still and wait for proof when I knew the Folly was in danger, but that wasn't nothin' compared to how hard it was to keep quiet when I knew—after I saw him kiss you."

One of the girl's hands went slowly to her breast. Goddard's face darkened.

"I did see that," voice trembling. "I looked through that window and saw it! I saw him hold you in his arms and saw him kiss you, and you—you didn't drive him off as you would any other man who come to strike at this pine, which is your life."

"At the pine! Milt?"

Her hand dropped to his arm and gripped the great muscles.

"You told me you didn't have time to love because this forest was your life; you've been fooled, Helen, fooled by a slick tongue and—and—you've been blind to what's goin' on. You've not only risked losin' what you call your life, but you've risked breakin' your heart! I can't talk the way he can, but I can't lie the way he can! I can't lie with words, I can't live a lie! Oh, I knew! I knew from the beginnin'. I couldn't be quite sure then, and you wouldn't believe me—But I am sure now! I could tell you the whole story. I could tell you what Taylor meant when he kisses you; I could tell you about this man Rowe, but I won't. Ask him!" He flung out an arm toward Taylor in the river. The girl held her eyes on his and her lips moved, but no sound came from them. "Bring him here," the woodsman said heavily, "and I'll make him tell you!"

For a moment she stared into his face. "You want me to bring—John Taylor here—to tell me—?"

Wretched suspicion ran through her. She was helpless to do else than yield to that suspicion before this man who was so certain, so convincing.

"Yes—Now!"

She went down the steps, crossed the plot of dry sod. Her legs were not steady. The one hand was again at her breast. She did not consciously move along; it was as though the will of the woodsman prompted every minute movement of her body. She reached the path beside the river bank and faltered and went on. Taylor, moving back to the high-riding hemlock log in the center of the freed raft, looked up. He waved and smiled; and then stopped still, for even at that distance her weakness was evident.

The hand, which had been at her breast, rose slowly and beckoned.

"You want me?" he called.

She tried to speak but could not, so merely nodded and beckoned again.

He spoke to the men with him and as the raft gained way planted his pike on bottom and vaulted across the strip of water.

She had stopped, the wind whipping her skirt about her legs, making her body appear to sway like an unstable stalk.

"Helen, what is it?" for he saw her blanched face and parted lips.

"Come," she said, hoarsely, and turned while he was yet yards away and started back towards the house.

"Tell me," he demanded, taking her arm as he came up with her.

She drew her elbow away from his grasp and looked at him as one who, even in half consciousness, shrinks from the undesirable.

"Helen?—"

They were at the steps. Goddard, glowering at Taylor, held back the screen and John followed the girl into the room. There they stood, Helen backing against the mantel beneath the bowl of roses and her father's photograph. Taylor looked from her to Goddard and caught the vengeful light in the man's gray eyes.

"What's the trouble," he asked, evenly, some deep-set impulse rising to steel him for a crisis.

Goddard spoke.

"There's been a good deal goin' on lately to cause suspicion. Some of us have had our eyes and ears open." He could not help grilling Helen for the pain she had caused him. "Now it's come to a show-down, Taylor, and we want to ask you a few questions."

His manner was galling. Resentment rose with a flush to Taylor's face, and behind that came fear.

But he said, outwardly at ease, "Fire away."

Goddard looked at Helen, who had not moved. Her breast rose and fell quickly and she was chalk white.

"In the first place you know this man Rowe, and there is no use denyin' it."

"I hadn't thought of denying it," he said, and looked to Helen as though for an explanation of this performance. He saw in her face that fright—and a growing something—suspicion?

"I thought so," jeered Goddard. "Now will you tell us what his job is?"

"He is my father's private secretary."

He saw the girl start sharply, heard an inarticulate whisper from her; saw Milt settle himself on one foot and smile grimly and nod.

"Yeah. Working for Luke Taylor. He came up here for Luke Taylor, didn't he? He was here just now on your father's business, wasn't he?"

Rowe here! He had lied, then; he had not gone back to Detroit last night; the days of grace which John expected had not materialized. He had been tricked, outguessed! It confused him.

"Look here, Goddard—Helen. This is something I've feared for a long time. I've been trying to work it out for weeks and I've kept still because you had enough to think about. I can explain if—"

"That's what we want, Taylor, is for you to explain. We know the rest—that you've known about this all along."

The man's bitterness was a trap closing about him. It was bewildering, terrible—it, and his sense of guilt. He was in a corner, hedged in by mounting suspicion.

"Helen, this isn't fair!"

His voice sounded strained. His one hand, uplifted, seemed unconvincing, only a gesture of supplication, a plea for mercy.

Helen detected this, saw his confusion contrasted with the certain strength of Goddard, and color flooded back into her face. The suspicion that had been in her eyes gave way to something else, to actual hostility. This man was also of that group for which she had no charity.

Taylor read that. His heart faltered and the hand sank slowly, but as it went down something rose within him: Pride. He had been dismayed, shaken, frightened, terror-struck by the fact that she suspected him of—Ah, he knew what suspicions his indecision could nourish! And now this other thing surged up, this pride, which would not let him beg. They had snatched at conclusions; he had made his mistake, but they would not give him opportunity to clear himself. She would not believe him innocent of wrong intent, she would not trust him.

"Yes, I will tell you why he is here," he said quietly, "My father sent him here to try to buy this forest."

"And how'd he happen to come?" Goddard advanced closer with his question. "Did you send for him?"

"I did not send for him."

"Sure of that? You had nothing to do with his coming here?"

"I—I had everything to do with it. I told my father about this timber, but I did not ask either of them to come here."

He knew that his answer sounded like an evasion even before Goddard turned to nod at the girl.

"You're wrong," Taylor cried out, moving forward impetuously, looking from one to the other. "You're all wrong; you're misjudging me, you're not giving me a chance!"

Something like hope, he thought, leaped into the girl's face, but Goddard interrupted thunderingly:

"Chance? What chance did you give Helen, here?"

"Every ch—"

"No chance at all! You brought Rowe here, you let him bring in his cruiser and go over the place and you covered it up. You let him go to Detroit and talk it over with your father. You waited for him to get back yesterday with his answer. You—"

"You're wrong, I tell you!"

"Shut up!" Drunk with the sense of dominion, Goddard brooked no interruption. "You went to Pancake yesterday. You knew Rowe was there. You went to his room in the hotel and talked with him. You want your own way in this deal; you told him that and I heard you; you ain't fooled me. I've watched every crooked move you've made. 'There's money in it,' you said, 'for my father and me. The fact that Miss Foraker is in a pinch gives us a chance to get in on the deal. If she weren't pressed for money we'd never get in.'

"You said that, Taylor, and you said you wanted this as much as your father ever wanted to cut pine in his life. You begged Rowe to help you out. Begged him to get behind you with your father's money. And you argued him over. He was here today to buy and he knows the mess Helen's in—because you told him, because you told the things she told you, you snake!"

He had said those things. His own words repeated by Goddard, pelted in on his consciousness, battering down the strength that had prompted him to admit everything before coming out with the explanation; his words, confused and rendered him helpless.

Again he turned to the girl. "Helen, do you believe—"

But his golden moment had passed. The pride which had held him quiet to take punishment and emerge with an explanation and clean hands had robbed him of the opportunity to clear himself. He had stood quiet; he had made no denial and now as he looked at the girl he saw only the tight set of her mouth, the barrier of her searching stare. She would not speak! She damned him with her silence! She had whispered love to him but in this moment she had no faith!

Love?—That was no love!

He could not know that beneath that front Helen's heart was breaking, She felt lost, like a little girl who is lost. She had given her trust, her lips to this man; she had challenged Goddard when he warned against him, but Goddard had been right. John Taylor had not been worthy of her trust, let alone her caresses—else why that silence? Why had he admitted the black charges? He had betrayed her while he made love! Oh, she was sick and weak and faint, but her high temper was up. Her forest was her life. Today John Taylor, through Phil Rowe, had struck at her life! There could be no answer to that!

She moved to her desk and sat down, trying to still the flutter of her heart; the tremor of her hands, fighting back the blackness that seeped up to clutch her consciousness.

"The last of your logs will be at the mill tonight," she said. "Here is last week's statement. We will be finished with your cut within a week."

This was dismissal and he rocked under the blow of her decisiveness.

"Yes—finished—And I will be going—now."

He turned and brushed past Goddard, leaving the house, going to his bunk, packing his suitcase with cold hands, a fog before his eyes, rage within his heart. She had no trust for him, she would not listen!

And remorse came to him because he had shrunk from facing this situation before, when there was time to explain, when he might have been believed.

Until Taylor had disappeared within the men's shanty Milt Goddard stood watching him. Then he turned. Helen sat at her desk, hands gripping the chair arms for a frantic hold on reality. He moved toward her and put his big palms on the desk.

"I warned you, "he said thickly. "I was right, wasn't I? And now I guess you know which man it is that—"

"Don't you say that word!" she cried hoarsely, springing up. "Don't you say it to me, Milt Goddard—Ever!—Nor any man! Any man!—"

She drew the back of one hand across her mouth as though she would wipe from it the memory of Taylor's kisses. She started to speak, but breath caught in her throat.

"Ever!" she cried again, chokingly and turned and fled.

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