he
insisted upon cleaning and caring for them herself; she would not allow
a candle to be used, because it might be overturned; and she saw to it
herself that every fire, even the one in Nan's bedroom, was properly
banked before the family retired at night.

Nan had always in mind what Uncle Henry said about mentioning fire
to Aunt Kate; so the curious young girl kept her lips closed upon the
subject. But she certainly was desirous of knowing about that fire, so
long ago, at Pale Lick, how it came about; if Aunt Kate had really got
her great scar there; and if it was really true that two members of her
uncle's family had met their death in the conflagration.

She tried not to think at all of Injun Pete. That was too terrible!

With all her heart, Nan wished she might do something that would really
help Uncle Henry solve his problem regarding the timber rights on the
Perkins Tract. The very judge who had granted the injunction forbidding
Mr. Sherwood to cut timber on the tract was related to the present
owners of the piece of timberland; and the tract had been the basis of a
feud in the Perkins family for two generations.

Many people were more or less interested in the case and they came to
the Sherwood home and talked excitedly about it in the big kitchen. Some
advised an utter disregard of the law. Others were evidently minded
to increase the trouble between Raffer and Uncle Henry by malicious
tale-bearing.

Often Nan thought of what Uncle Henry had said to old Toby Vanderwiller.
She learned that Toby was one of the oldest settlers in this part of the
Michigan Peninsula, and in his youth had been a timber runner, that is,
a man who by following the surveyors' lines on a piece of timber, and
weaving back and forth across it, can judge its market value so nearly
right that his employer, the prospective timber merchant, is able to bid
intelligently for the so-called "stumpage" on the tract.

Toby was still a vigorous man save when that bane of the woodsman,
rheumatism, laid him by the heels. He had a bit of a farm in the
tamarack swamp. Once, being laid up by his arch enemy, with his joints
stiffened and muscles throbbing with pain, Toby had seen the gaunt
wolf of starvation, more terrible than any timber wolf, waiting at his
doorstone. His old wife and a crippled grandson were dependent on Toby,
too.

Thus in desperate straits Toby Vanderwiller had accepted help from
Gedney Raffer. It was a pitifully small sum R