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 h.e.l.lbeam provide.

It'll be yours and his, solely and alone. I--I shall pa.s.s right out of it. h.e.l.lbeam 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 pa.s.sed 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."

Standing's retort was instant. And the tone of it cut like a knife.

Bat regarded him keenly. His knife had ceased from its work on the plug.

"That's so," he said after a while. Then his gaze drifted in the direction of the house across the water, and the expression in the grey depths of his eyes became lost to the man who could not forget that the remaining child of his wife was the offspring of another man. "It seems queer," he went on reflectively. "That woman, your Nancy, was about the best loved wife, a fellow could think of. She was all sorts of a woman to you. Guess she was mostly the sun, moon, an' stars of your life. Yet her kiddie, a pore, lonesome kiddie, was toted right off to school so she couldn't b.u.t.t in on you. You've never seen her, have you? And she was blood of the woman that set you nigh crazy. Only her father was another feller. No, Les." He shook his head, and went on filling his pipe. "No, Les, this mill and all about it can go hang if that pore, lone kiddie is wiped out of your reckoning. Maybe I'm queer about things. Maybe I'm no account anyway when it comes to the things of life mostly belonging to Sunday School. But I'd as lief go back to the woods I came from, as handle a proposition for you that don't figger that little gal in it. You best take that as all I've to say. There's a heap more I could say. But it don't matter. You're feelin' bad. Things have hit you bad. And you reckon they're going to hit you worse. Maybe you're right. Maybe you're wrong. Anyway these things are for you, though I'd be mighty thankful to help you. You want to go out of it all. You want to follow up some queer notion you got. You reckon it's going to give you peace. I hope so. I do sure. The thing you've said goes with me without shouting one way or the other. It grieves me bad. But that's no account anyway. But there's that gal standing between us, and she's going to stand right there till you've finished the things you're maybe going to say."

For a moment the men looked into each other's eyes. It was a tense moment of sudden crisis between them.

"Well?"

Bat's unyielding interrogation came sharply. Standing nodded.

"I hadn't thought, Bat," he said. Then he drew a deep breath. "I surely hadn't, but I guess you're right. She's my stepdaughter. And I've a right to do the thing you say. Yes. It's queer when I think of it," he went on musingly. "When I married her mother the girl didn't seem to come into our reckoning. She was at school, and I never even saw her.

Then her mother wanted her left there, anyway till her schooling was through. Everything was paid. I saw to that. But--yes, I guess you're right. It's up to me, and I'll fix it."

"The mill?"

"She shall have equal share when the time comes."

"When the whole work's put through?"

"Yes. And meanwhile she'll be amply provided for." Standing spread out his hands deprecatingly. "You see, we did things in a hurry, Bat. There was always h.e.l.lbeam. And my Nancy understood that. I wonder--"

Bat smoked on thoughtfully, and presently the other roused himself from the pre-occupation into which he had fallen.

"Does that satisfy?" he demanded.

Bat nodded.

"I'll do the darnedest I know, Les," he said in his st.u.r.dy fashion. "Fix that pore gal right. Hand her the share she's a right to--when the time comes along. Do that an' I'll not rest till the Skandinavians are left hollerin'. That kid's your daughter, for all she ain't flesh and blood of yours, an' you ain't ever see her. And anyway she's flesh of your Nancy, which seems to me hands her even a bigger claim."

He moved away from his leaning post and his back was turned to hide that which looked out of his eyes.

"I'm grieved," he went on, in his simple fashion, "I'm so grieved about things I can't tell you, Les. I always guessed to drive this thing through with you. I always reckoned to make good to you for that thing you did by me. Well, there's no use in talkin'. You reckon this notion of yours'll make you feel better, it's goin' to hand you--peace. That goes with me. Oh, yes, all the time, seein' you feel that way. But--say, we best get right home--or I'll cry like a darn-fool kid."

CHAPTER V

NANCY MCDONALD

Charles Nisson was standing at the window. His eyes were deeply reflective as he watched the gently falling snow outside. He was a st.u.r.dy creature in his well-cut, well-cared-for black suit. For all he was past middle life there was little about him to emphasise the fact unless it were his trim, well-brushed snow-white hair, and the light covering of whisker and beard of a similar hue. He looked to be full of strength of purpose and physical energy.

His back was turned on the pleasant dining-room of his home in Abercrombie, a remote town in Ontario, where he and his wife had only just finished breakfast. Sarah Nisson was sitting beside the anthracite stove which radiated its pleasant warmth against the bitter chill of winter reigning outside. She was still consuming the pages of her bulky mail.

A clock chimed the hour, and the wife looked up from her letter. She turned a face that was still pretty for all her fifty odd years, in the direction of the man at the window.

"Ten o'clock, Charles," she reminded him. Then her enquiring look melted into a gentle smile. "The office has less attraction with the snow falling."

"It has less attraction to-day, anyway," the lawyer responded without turning. A short laugh punctuated his prompt reply.

"You mean the Nancy McDonald business?"

Sarah Nisson laid her mail aside.

"Yes." The lawyer sighed and turned from his contemplation of the snow.

He moved across to the stove. "I'm a bit of a coward, Sally," he went on, holding out his hands to the warmth. "The lives of other people are nearly as interesting as they are exasperating. They seem just as foolishly ordered as we believe our own to be well and truly ordered. I don't know who it was said 'all men are fools,' or liars, or something, but I guess he was right. Yes, we're all fools. I really don't know how we manage to get through a day, let alone a lifetime, without absolute disaster. We spend most of our time abusing Providence for the result of our own shortcomings, when really we ought to be mighty polite and thankful to the blind good fortune that lets us dodge the results of our follies."

"All of which I suppose has to do with the way Leslie Martin, or Leslie Standing, as he calls himself now, is acting."

"Well, most of it."

The man's eyes had become seriously reflective again.

Sarah Nisson nodded her pretty head. She leant her ample proportions towards the stove and emulated her husband's att.i.tude, warming her plump hands. Her brown eyes were twinkling, and her broad, unlined brow was calmly serene. Her iron-grey hair was as carefully dressed as though she were still in the twenties, moreover it was utterly untouched by any of the shams so beloved of the modern woman of advancing years.

"The death of his poor wife almost seems to have unhinged him," she said, with a troubled pucker of her brows. "But--but I don't wonder, I really don't. She was the sweetest girl. Poor soul. And that bonny wee boy. But there, I can't bear to think of it all. You mustn't blame him too much, Charles. I guess you don't in your heart. It's just as his attorney you feel mad about things. It's best to remember you were his friend first, and only his adviser, and man of business, after. The whole thing makes me feel I want to cry. And that poor girl coming to see you to-day. The other Nancy, I mean. I don't think I'd feel so bad about things if it wasn't for her. You know, I like Leslie. And I was as fond of his wife as I just could be, for all she made a fool of herself when she married that hateful James McDonald, who was no better than a revolutionary. Thank goodness he died and got out before he could do any harm. But I do think Leslie and poor Nancy were selfish about her child. I don't believe it was so much him as Nancy. From the moment Leslie came on the scene it was she who kept the poor child at college.

She never even let him see her. And she's such a bonny girl, too. Do you know, I believe Nancy's death, and even the death of the baby boy, wouldn't have meant half so much to Leslie if he'd had Nancy's own girl with him. She'd have got herself right into his heart with her bonny ways, and her hazel eyes that look like great, big smiling flowers. Then her hair. She's a lovely, lovely child. I wish she was mine. I'd like to have her right here always. Couldn't you fix it that way?"

The man shook his head.

"I'd like to--but--"

"But what?"

"You see there's a whole lot to think about," the lawyer went on seriously. "Why, I don't even know how to get through my interview with her to-day without lying to her like a politician. Now just get a look at the position. Here's a girl, a beautiful, high-spirited girl of sixteen, straight out from college, at the beginning of life, with her, head full of 'whys,' and 'wherefores.' Sixteen's well-nigh grown up these days, mind you. Her mother's dead, and curiously the fact didn't seem to break her up as you'd have expected it to. Why?" The man shrugged. "It's not because she lacks feeling. Oh, no. Maybe it's because of the strength of those feelings. Remember her mother married Leslie when the child was thirteen. A good understanding age. She was never allowed to see her father. No. She was packed off to school and kept there--"

"Yes, I know," Sarah broke in, with impatient warmth. "And just at the time a girl most needs she never even saw her mother for over three years. G.o.d doesn't give us women our babies to treat them as if they weren't our own flesh and blood. Young Nancy was left to those maiden dames at college, who don't know more about a child than is laid down by highbrow officials in the text books they need to study to qualify for their posts. They haven't a notion beyond stuffing her poor wee head with the sort of view of life set down in fool history books. They say she's clever and bright. Well, that's all they care about. When they've done with her they'll have knocked all the girl out of her, and turned her adrift on the world behind a pair of disfiguring spectacles, with her beautiful hair all scratched back off her pretty face, and maybe 'bobbed,' and they'll fill her grips with pamphlets and literature enough to stock a patent med'cine factory, instead of the lawn, and lace, and silk a girl should think about, and leave her with as much chance of getting happily married as a queen mummy of the Egyptians.

It's a shame, just a real shame. Why, if that poor, lonesome child came right along to me, I'd--"