"Our acquaintance is short, but if you don't feel that I'm too much of a stranger, I might perhaps be able to throw some light on any points that you're puzzled about. I've had a pretty extensive experience in these matters."

He was mildly gratified by his guest's ready confidence, but Andrew had been endowed with a quick and accurate judgment of character. He talked without reserve as Frobisher drew him out; and the American listened with unusual interest. The affairs of the Rain Bluff Company were no concern of his, but the working of Allinson's mind fixed his attention. Allinson was obviously a novice in such matters, but, for an untrained man, he showed a grasp of the salient points and a boldness in attacking difficulties which Frobisher thought remarkable.

Lighting a fresh cigar when Andrew had finished, he smoked a while in silence. With a few words he might explain the Company's situation in a manner that would fill his guest with astonishment and perhaps dismay, but on the whole it did not seem advisable that they should be spoken. It would be better that Allinson should find out for himself how matters stood. Frobisher felt strongly curious about what he would do then.

Andrew presently looked up, as if he expected some comment.

"There are one or two suggestions I might make," said Frobisher.

They were not of much moment, though they promised to save Andrew some time and trouble, and after discussing them he rose to go. When they reached the hall Geraldine met them.

"If you are going to the Landing, I'll come with you," she said.

"There are a few things I want from the stores."

"Then if Mr. Allinson will excuse me, I'll let you take him. I have some matters to consider before the mail to-morrow; and waiting while you buy millinery is a tedious business."

Frobisher shook hands with Andrew cordially.

"Come back to the Island of Pines whenever you feel inclined," he said, and Andrew and Geraldine walked down to the pier.

She started the engine and stood aft, holding the helm, while Andrew sat on a locker, looking about while the launch swept noisily away.

The days were rapidly getting shorter and the sunlight had faded off the lake. The breeze had fallen and the water lay gleaming, smooth as oil, with the shadow of the rocks and trees floating on it. Here and there a clump of pines to the westward stood out, black and rugged, against a glow of pink and green; the air was cold and filled with a resinous fragrance. But Geraldine occupied most of Andrew's attention.

She stood, gracefully poised, her light dress fluttering in the draught made by the launch's speed, and a clear warm color glowing in her face. Fine spray leaped about the bows, around which there curled a wisp of foam, and the froth streamed back far across the lake.

Andrew was inclined to be sorry the launch was so fast: it was not far to the Landing, and he could have spent an hour or two pleasantly on board. Miss Frobisher was not the first attractive young woman he had met, and she had neither said nor done anything in particular to excite his admiration. Indeed, when he came to think of it, she had said little to him; but somehow she impressed him as no other girl had done. When presently she made some remark which demanded an answer, they chatted gaily until she ran the launch alongside the wharf. There Andrew left her and went to his hotel.

After making her purchases, Geraldine returned to the island, where she found her father sitting on the pier with a notebook in his hand.

"You landed your pa.s.senger safely, I see. What did you think of him?"

"He didn't give me much opportunity for forming an opinion, except that he's rather serious," Geraldine answered with a smile. "Besides, I don't suppose my opinion would be worth as much as yours."

"That's a very modest admission; I thought you imagined yourself a good judge of young men. Anyway, I'm interested in this one; perhaps because he has upset the ideas I had about him."

"How?"

"For one thing, he's straight--straight as a plumb-line, which isn't altogether what I expected. Then, for a man engaged in business, he's a type that's new to me."

"Are those remarks connected?" Geraldine asked with a laugh. "You're in business and n.o.body could be straighter than you are."

Frobisher looked at her with appreciation.

"I'm afraid there have been occasions when I had to sail dangerously near the wind; but that's outside the question. I'm sorry for this young fellow--there's trouble ahead of him."

"You mean financial trouble? Of course, I've heard people talking about the mine."

"Not altogether; anyway, if I'm right about him, I don't think he'll find that the worst." Frobisher broke into a thoughtful smile. "After all, I have met business men who didn't consider their money the most important thing they could lose. But I'm inclined to think the people who sent Allinson over here have made a mistake."

Geraldine was unwilling to betray too great an interest in the man; and, indeed, her curiosity about him did not go very far.

"Oh, well," she said, "it really doesn't concern us."

She turned toward the house, and Frobisher looked out across the water. From what he knew about Rain Bluff Mine he had concluded that Allinson must be either a clever and somewhat unscrupulous exploiter of such ventures, or a guileless ignoramus who could be made a tool of. Now, having met him, he was convinced that the man was neither of these. However, he had other things to think about; and opening the notebook he busied himself with a scheme for utilizing some water-power.

CHAPTER IX

AMONG THE ICE

Graham was sitting on the veranda of his house at the Landing after supper one evening when Andrew joined him. The veranda was broad, and covered with mosquito-netting, and furnished with a table and one or two chairs; the wooden house was small but pretty. In front a plot of gra.s.s, kept green throughout the hot summer by an automatic sprinkler, ran, unfenced, to the edge of the dusty road. Across this a belt of blackened fir stumps stretched back to the stacks of lumber by the sawmill, and beyond that the lake lay shining in the evening light.

A window was open and Andrew could hear a girl singing. A rattle of crockery which suggested that Mrs. Graham was busy with domestic duties also reached him now and then; and a lad who had greeted him pleasantly as he pa.s.sed sat on the nearest fir stump talking with a companion. Graham seemed to indicate it all with a movement of his pipe as he turned to Andrew.

"My world, Mr. Allinson," he said. "A happy one, but narrow."

"I feel inclined to envy you," Andrew replied.

"I am to be envied; I admit it with grat.i.tude." Graham glanced half wistfully at a map on the table. "For all that, I remember the wide s.p.a.ces up yonder now and then."

"If I were in your place, I wouldn't study that map too much."

"Ah! It isn't an amus.e.m.e.nt that I often indulge in; but sometimes, when I've spent a week making up trumpery lumber bills or getting in five-dollar accounts, I find it a solace to recall what I used to do.

However, I've inconsistently practised prudent self-denial in other ways. There was a moose head--a beast I shot--I took off its stand and gave to the Inst.i.tute; an old pair of snowshoes that hung above the mantel I gave my boy. He said they were very poor things and sadly out of date."

Andrew glanced at the map and noticed the lines penciled across it. He felt that he was not acting considerately in tempting Graham, but he could not resist.

"Those marks show the marches you have made?" he asked.

Graham laid his finger on the map, moving it from spot to spot.

"Yes. I don't need a diary; I can see it all again. We started here one winter and made three hundred miles on half rations, with wind and snow ahead all the way. There we camped three days in a blizzard among a clump of willows, while the snow piled up six feet deep to lee of us. I made this line through a country new to me; two hundred miles over soft snow, with the dogs playing out and the timber wolves on my trail for the last few days. This lake ends in a big muskeg, and we snagged our canoe there one fall. As she'd ripped her bilge open, we left her and spent a day and a half floundering through two or three feet of water and tall reeds, and carrying loads of sixty pounds." He paused and indicated a line that broke off abruptly in a wide bare s.p.a.ce. "The lode lies south of here, and I believe I'm the only survivor of the few who knew of it. One half-breed was drowned in a rapid, another lost in a blizzard; the agent, so I heard afterward, left the factory to visit some Indians three or four miles off and they found him next day in a snowdrift, frozen to death."

"A grim country," Andrew said thoughtfully, "One to make a man afraid, and yet----"

Graham laughed, rather harshly.

"Yes; I think you know! Well, I'm glad that for twenty years I've mastered the longing and kept my head. Now, however, my children have made a fair start, with prospects of going farther than I have done, and my responsibility is lightening. A winter up there would satisfy me--I'm afraid it would be all I could stand now--and though it's still out of the question, I've a feeling that a way may be found before I grow too old."

He rolled up the map resolutely and laid it aside, and soon afterward Mrs. Graham's voice reached them.

"Bring Mr. Allinson in. It's getting chilly."

Andrew rose and followed Graham into his sitting-room. It was very small and there were signs of economy in its appointments, but it had a homelike charm. Two or three sketches in color which showed some talent hung on the varnished board walls. The lamp, though obviously cheap, was of artistic design; the rug on the stained floor and the hangings were of harmonious hue. Mrs. Graham, a little, faded woman with a cheerful air, sat sewing at a table, and opposite her a girl was busy with some papers. Both greeted Andrew cordially, and a few minutes later the young man he had seen outside came in with a humorous tale he had heard.

He was a handsome lad, quicker of speech and more a.s.sertive than his father, and the girl, who now and then made a remark, had a decided air. Though Graham would occasionally talk without reserve, he was as a rule quiet and dreamy. It was not from him that his children had acquired a trace of the somewhat aggressive smartness which characterizes the inhabitants of the new western cities: he had more in common with the silent dwellers in the lonely wilds. These are, for the most part, sentimentalists of a kind; loving the wilderness, not for what can be made out of it, and untouched by the materialistic ideas of the towns, where the business chance is the chief thing sought. Their gifts become most manifest when the ice breaks up on the rivers across which they must get the dog-sleds, and when all the powers of mind and body are taxed to traverse the frozen waste before starvation cuts short the march. It struck Andrew that Graham, dressed in shabby clothes, listening good-humoredly while his children talked, had somehow the look of a captive eagle, conscious of crippled wings, though the simile was a bad one because there was no predatory fierceness in him.

"One of you might shut the door," said Mrs. Graham. "The nights are getting colder fast; we'll soon have to light the bas.e.m.e.nt heater."