" He
spread one of a roll of papers on his knees. "I got a set of duplicates
for you. Thought you might like to keep them. The office tells me," he
concluded modestly, "that they are attracting lots of attention, but are
looked upon as being a rather clever sort of fiction."

Wallace picked up the sheet. His eye was at once met by the heading,
"'So long, boys,'" in letters a half inch in height, and immediately
underneath in smaller type, "said Jimmy Powers, and threw his hat in the
face of death."

"It's all there," explained the journalist, "--the jam and the break,
and all this magnificent struggle afterwards. It makes a great yarn.
I feel tempted sometimes to help it out a little--artistically, you
know--but of course that wouldn't do. She'd make a ripping yarn, though,
if I could get up some motive outside mere trade rivalry for the blowing
up of those dams. That would just round it off."

Wallace Carpenter was about to reply that such a motive actually
existed, when the conversation was interrupted by the approach of Thorpe
and Big Junko. The former looked twenty years older after his winter.
His eye was dull, his shoulders drooped, his gait was inelastic. The
whole bearing of the man was that of one weary to the bone.

"I've got something here to show you, Harry," cried Wallace Carpenter,
waving one of the papers. "It was a great drive and here's something to
remember it by."

"All right, Wallace, by and by," replied Thorpe dully. "I'm dead. I'm
going to turn in for a while. I need sleep more than anything else. I
can't think now."

He passed through the little passage into the "parlor bed-room," which
Mrs. Hathaway always kept in readiness for members of the firm. There he
fell heavily asleep almost before his body had met the bed.

In the long dining room the rivermen consumed a belated dinner. They had
no comments to make. It was over.

The two on the veranda smoked. To the right, at the end of the sawdust
street, the mill sang its varying and lulling keys. The odor of
fresh-sawed pine perfumed the air. Not a hundred yards away the river
slipped silently to the distant blue Superior, escaping between the
slanting stone-filled cribs which held back the logs. Down the south and
west the huge thunderheads gathered and flashed and grumbled, as they
had done every afternoon for days previous.

"Queer thing," commented Hamilton finally, "these cold streaks in the
air. They are just as distinct as though t