“Now,” he said, as he spread it on the rope, “all I need is a pillow and a blanket and I’m fixed.”

He went down and cooked his supper.  Then he talked both to Mrs. Morton and to Lew by wireless.  He made a cheerful blaze in his fireplace and studied until ten o’clock.  Then he got a pillow and a pair of blankets, blew out his lamp, and ascended to the tower.  He intended to go to sleep at once, but the night was so beautiful that for a long time he sat on his bunk, looking out over the forest, which lay still as a sleeping infant under the moon’s white light.  Finally he wrapped himself in his blanket, stretched out on his bunk, and was quickly asleep.

Charley was up early the next morning.  He glanced at his watch and saw that it lacked three-quarters of an hour of the time he usually had a brief wireless chat with Mrs. Morton, so he cooked his breakfast at once.  Before he had finished eating, he heard the distant chugging of the forester’s car.  Sometime later a cheery voice called up the slope, and looking out of his door, Charley saw Mr. Marlin climbing up the mountain.  Charley hustled to get a cup of coffee ready for his chief.

“I came early,” said the forester, “for it will take us some time to go over these plans.  Also I brought Lumley’s figures for you to check up your estimate by.”  And he handed Charley some slips of paper.

While Mr. Marlin was drinking his coffee, Charley compared Lumley’s figures with those he had made on a bit of paper.  At first he looked crestfallen.  Then he appeared puzzled.  Then an expression of great indignation came into his face.  He seemed greatly agitated.

The forester was studying his expression closely.  “What’s the difficulty, Charley?” he asked.

“I told you I never trusted Lumley,” he burst out.  “Just look here.”

He laid his figures beside Lumley’s.  Mr. Marlin ran his eye over them.  At first he, too, seemed puzzled.  Then his face grew black as a thundercloud.

“Are you certain that you know how to scale a log right, Charley?” he asked.

“Absolutely, Mr. Marlin.”

“How do you estimate a log?”

Charley got his rule and laid it across the end of an unburned log in his fireplace.  It was ten inches in diameter.

“If that were a twelve-foot log,” he said, consulting the scale, “it would have three board feet in it.  If it were sixteen feet long, it would have six feet.”

“Absolutely correct, Charley.  Did you measure those logs that way yesterday?”

“Yes, sir.”

The two men looked at each other for a full minute.  “Charley,” said the forester, “I’ve been as blind as a bat.  I never liked Lumley, any more than you did, though I couldn’t tell you that.  But I trusted him because he had been in the department a good many years and was fairly efficient.  He has betrayed my trust and attempted to rob the state by false measurement.  I understand now why my estimate seemed so far out of the way.  The estimate was probably close enough.  Lumley has sold out to the lumber operators.  I’d like to know how they reached him.”