one. The
room was warm, and the sun beyond the window was radiant. Beyond the
desk Bat was seated, where his wandering gaze could drift to the one
object of which it never tired. He was at the window which looked out
upon the mill below.

He was reading Father Adam's letter. Sternford was silently regarding
his squat figure. He was waiting and wondering, speculating as to the
hard-faced, uncultured creature who had built up all the amazing details
that made up an industrial city in a territory that was outlawed by
Nature.

Bat thrust the letter away and looked up.

"Father Adam didn't write that letter for you? He just handed it out to
you to bring along?"

"That's how," Bull nodded.

"Sure." Bat's tone became reflective. "He must have wrote that letter
years, and held it against the time he located you. He's queer."

Bull laughed.

"Maybe he is," he said, "I don't know about that. But he's one hell of a
good man," he went on warmly. "Do you know him? But of course you do.
Say, he's just father and mother to every darn lumber-jack that haunts
the forests of Quebec, and it don't worry him if his children are
hellhound or honest. There's that to him sets me just crazy. I'd like to
see his thin, tired face, always smiling." He stirred. And the warmth
died abruptly out of his manner. "Say, you knew me--at the wharf?"

"Sure. I knew you before you came along. We've a wireless out on the
headland."

"I see. Father Adam warned you I was coming. He told you--"

"The whole darn yarn. Sure."

Bull laughed grimly.

"That he guessed to shoot me to small meat if I didn't do as he said?"

"If you didn't cut out homicide from your notions of--sport."

"Yes. It was tough," Bull regretted. "But I'm glad--now."

"Yep. Guess any straight sort of feller would feel that way--after."

The lumberman's regret was unnoticed by the other.

Suddenly Bull leant forward in his chair. A smile, half whimsical, half
incredulous, lit his eyes. He thrust his elbows on the desk and
supported his face in his hands.

"It just beats hell!" he cried. "It certainly does. Oh, I'm awake all
right. Sure, I am. One time I wasn't sure. Two months back I was lying
around a lousy summer camp getting ready to take a hand in the winter
cut for the Skandinavia Corporation. I was within two seconds of
breaking a man's life--the rotten camp boss. And now? Why, now I'm
sitting around in dandy tweeds in the boss chair of a swell office, with
a crazy