e sky bright. Fat hens clucked among the grasses. A feel of
Sunday was in the air.

"I must have something to live on," said he thoughtfully at last.

"So must I," said Newmark. "We'll have to pay ourselves salaries, of
course, but the smaller the better at first. You'll have to take charge
of the men and the work and all the rest of it--I don't know anything
about that. I'll attend to the incorporating and the routine, and I'll
try to place the stock. You'll have to see, first of all, whether you
can get contracts from the logging firms to drive the logs."

"How can I tell what to charge them?"

"We'll have to figure that very closely. You know where these different
drives would start from, and how long each of them would take?"

"Oh, yes; I know the river pretty well."

"Well, then we'll figure how many days' driving there is for each, and
how many men there are, and what it costs for wages, grub, tools--we'll
just have to figure as near as we can to the actual cost, and then add a
margin for profit and for interest on our investment."

"It might work out all right," admitted Orde.

"I'm confident it would," asserted Newmark. "And there'd be no harm
figuring it all out, would there?"

"No," agreed Orde, "that would be fun all right."

At this moment Amanda appeared at the back door and waved an apron.

"Mr. Jack!" she called. "Come in to dinner."

Newmark looked puzzled, and, as he arose, glanced surreptitiously at his
watch. Orde seemed to take the summons as one to be expected, however.
In fact, the strange hour was the usual Sunday custom in the Redding of
that day, and had to do with the late-church freedom of Amanda and her
like.

"Come in and eat with us," invited Orde. "We'd be glad to have you."

But Newmark declined.

"Come up to-morrow night, then, at half-past six, for supper," Orde
urged him. "We can figure on these things a little. I'm in Daly's all
day, and hardly have time except evenings."

To this Newmark assented. Orde walked with him down the deep-shaded
driveway with the clipped privet hedge on one side, to the iron gate
that swung open when one drove over a projecting lever. There he said
good-bye.

A moment later he entered the long dining-room, where Grandpa and
Grandma Orde were already seated. An old-fashioned service of smooth
silver and ivory-handled steel knives gave distinction to the plain
white linen. A tea-pot smothered in a "cosey" stood at Grandma Orde's
right. A