going to pile up on the mill dock; hence, when the smash comes and the Sequoia Bank of Commerce calls our loan and we cannot possibly meet it, the lumber on hand will prove security for the loan, will it not?  In fact, it will be worth two or three dollars per thousand more then than it is now, because it will be air-dried.  And inasmuch as all the signs point to Pennington’s gobbling us anyhow, it strikes me as a rather good business on his part to give us sufficient rope to insure a thorough job of hanging.”

“But what idea have you got back of such a procedure, Bryce?”

“Merely a forlorn hope, Dad.  Something might turn up.  The market may take a sudden spurt and go up three or four dollars.”

“Yes—­and it may take a sudden spurt and drop three or four dollars,” his father reminded him.

Bryce laughed.  “That would be Pennington’s funeral, Dad.  And whether the market goes up or comes down, it costs us nothing to make the experiment.”

“Quite true.” his father agreed.

“Then, if you’ll come down to the office to-morrow morning, Dad, we’ll hold a meeting of our board of directors and authorize me, as president of the company, to sign the note to the bank.  We’re borrowing this without collateral, you know.”

John Cardigan sighed.  Such daring financial acrobatics were not usual with him, but as Bryce had remarked there was no reason why, in their present predicament, they should not gamble.  Hence he entered no further objection, and the following day the agreement was entered into with the bank.  Bryce closed by wire for the extra logging-equipment and immediately set about rounding up a crew for the woods and for the night-shift in the mill.

For a month Bryce was as busy as the proverbial one-armed paper-hanger with the itch, and during all that time he did not see Shirley Sumner or hear of her, directly or indirectly.  Only at infrequent intervals did he permit himself to think of her, for he was striving to forget, and the memory of his brief glimpse of paradise was always provocative of pain.

Moira McTavish, in the meantime, had come down from the woods and entered upon her duties in the mill office.  The change from her dull, drab life, giving her, as it did, an opportunity for companionship with people of greater mentality and refinement than she had been used to, quickly brought about a swift transition in the girl’s nature.  With the passing of the coarse shoes and calico dresses and the substitution of the kind of clothing all women of Moira’s instinctive refinement and natural beauty long for, the girl became cheerful, animated, and imbued with the optimism of her years.  At first old Sinclair resented the advent of a woman in the office; then he discovered that Moira’s efforts lightened his own labours in exact proportion to the knowledge of the business which she assimilated from day to day.