money on its property
when the time should come.

What Orde regarded as a series of petty annoyances had made the problem
of paying for the California timber a matter of greater difficulty than
he had supposed it would be. A pressure whose points of support he could
not place was closing slowly on him. Against this pressure he exerted
himself. It made him a trifle uneasy, but it did not worry him. The
margin of safety was not as broad as he had reckoned, but it existed.
And in any case, if worse came to worst, he could always mortgage
the California timber for enough to make up the difference--and more.
Against this expedient, however, he opposed a sentimental obstinacy.
It was Bobby's, and he objected to encumbering it. In fact, Orde
was capable of a prolonged and bitter struggle to avoid doing so.
Nevertheless, it was there--an asset. A loan on its security would, with
what he had set aside, more than pay the notes on the northern peninsula
stumpage. Orde felt perfectly easy in his mind. He was in the position
of many of our rich men's sons who, quite sincerely and earnestly, go
penniless to the city to make their way. They live on their nine dollars
a week, and go hungry when they lose their jobs. They stand on their own
feet, and yet--in case of severe illness or actual starvation--the old
man is there! It gives them a courage to be contented on nothing. So
Orde would have gone to almost any lengths to keep free "Bobby's tract,"
but it stood always between himself and disaster. And a loan on western
timber could be paid off just as easily as a loan on eastern timber;
when you came right down to that. Even could he have known his partner's
intentions, they would, on this account, have caused him no uneasiness,
however angry they would have made him, or however determined to break
the partnership. Even though Newmark destroyed utterly the firm's
profits for the remaining year and a half the notes had to run, he could
not thereby ruin Orde's chances. A loan on the California timber would
solve all problems now. In this reasoning Orde would have committed
the mistake of all large and generous temperaments when called upon to
measure natures more subtle than their own. He would have underestimated
both Newmark's resources and his own grasp of situations. [*]

* The author has considered it useless to burden the course
of the narrative with a detailed account of Newmark's
financial manoeuvres. Realising,