age into small fragments and dropped them into the
wastepaper basket beside him. Only was his emotion displayed in the
deliberate care with which he reduced the paper to the smallest possible
fragments.

CHAPTER II

THE MAN WITH THE MAIL

The calm waters of Farewell Cove lay a-shimmer under the slanting rays
of the sun. A wealth of racing white cloud filled the dome of the summer
sky, speeding under the pressure of a strong top wind. Even the harsh
world of Labrador was smiling under the beneficence of the brief summer
season.

Leslie Standing stood for a moment before passing down the winding
woodland trail on his way to the water-front below. The view of it all
was irresistible to him in his present mood, and he feasted his eyes
hungrily while the resolve he had taken yielded an inflexible hardening.

Bat Harker was less affected by the things spread out before him. He was
concerned only for the mood of the man beside him. So he waited with
such patience as his hasty nature could summon.

"It's all good, Bat, old friend," Standing said, after a moment's silent
contemplation. "It's too good to lose. It's too good for us to stand for
interference from--Nathaniel Hellbeam."

Bat grunted some sort of acquiescence. He was gazing steadily out over
the spruce belt which covered the lower slopes of the hillside. His keen
deep-set eyes were on the shipping lying out in the cove, watching the
fussy approach of the bluff packet boat.

It was a scene of amazing natural splendour which the works of man had
no power to destroy. Farewell Cove was a perfect natural harbour,
deep-set amidst surrounding, lofty, forest-clad hills. It was wide and
deep, a veritable sea-lake, backing inland some fifteen miles behind the
wide headland gateway to the East, which guarded its entrance from the
storming Atlantic. Its shores were of virgin forest, peopled with the
delicate-hued spruce, and all the many other varieties of soft, white,
long-fibred timber demanded in the manufacture of the groundwood pulp
needed for the world's paper industry.

Far as the eye could see, in every direction, it was the same; forest
and hill. And, in the heart of it all, the great watercourse of the
Beaver River debouched upon the cove which linked it with the ocean
beyond. It was a world of forest, seeming of limitless extent.

But the feast that had inspired Leslie Standing's words was less the
banquet which Nature had spread than the things whi