trade of this country.  It was work that appealed to my imagination.  I wanted to build this great thing and pass it on to my boy.  It seemed to me fine.  Worth while.  It was a man’s work, and it seemed to me a life well spent.  I had the guts then—­with your support, and the support the thought of my son gave me.  I haven’t the guts now.  The notion fired you, too.  It fired you, and it’ll grieve you desperately to see it abandoned.  It shan’t be abandoned.  Once in the woods of this queer country I found a man—­such a man as is rarely found.  He was a man into whose hands I could put my life.  And I guess there’s no greater trust one man can have in another.  He was a man of immense capacity.  A man of intellect for all he had no schooling but the schooling of Quebec’s rough woods.  That man was you, Bat.  I’d like to say to you:  ’Here’s the property.  You know the scheme.  Go on.  Carry it through.’  But I can’t.  I can’t because one man can’t do it.  Well, the woods gave me one man, and they’re going to give me another to take the place of the weak-gutted creature who intends to ‘rat.’  I’m going to find you a partner, a man with brain and force like yourself.  A man of iron guts.  And when I’ve found him I’m going to send him on to you.  And if you approve him he shall be full partner with you in this concern the day that sees the Canadian Groundwood Trust completed, and the breaking of the Skandinavian ring.  Do you follow it all?  You and this man will be equal partners in the mill, and every available cent of its capital—­the capital I made Hellbeam provide.  It’ll be yours and his, solely and alone.  I—­I shall pass right out of it.  Hellbeam has no score against you.  He has no penitentiary preparing for you.  You are not concerned with him.  Whatever he may have in store for me he can do nothing to you, and the money I beat him out of will have passed beyond his reach.”

“And this man you figger to locate?  You reckon to take a chance on your judgment?”

Bat’s challenge came on the instant.

“On mine, and—­yours.”  Standing’s eyes were full of a keen confidence.  And Bat realised something of the sanity lying behind a seemingly mad proposition.  “He’ll own nothing until he and you have completed the work as we see it.  To own his share in the thing he must prove his capacity.  He’ll be held by the tightest and strongest contract Charles Nisson can draw up.”

Bat spat out his chew.  He replaced it with a pipe, and prepared to flake off its filling from a plug of tobacco.  Standing watched him with the anxious eyes of a prisoner awaiting sentence.  With the cutting of the first flakes of tobacco, Bat looked up.

“And this little gal-child, with the same name as the mother who just meant the whole of everything life could hand you?  This kiddie with her mother’s blood running in innocent veins?  She’s your Nancy’s daughter and I guess your marriage made her yours.”

“She’s another man’s child.”