ssociates that he would one day be the biggest power in the north
country, unless something happened to check him soon. That was very
flattering, wasn't it? It will make you very proud, I know. Tell Mr.
O'Mara I wished to be recalled to him. As I have already warned you in
this letter, father insists on coming with me. I think he must be a
little tired of the city himself, for he is very restless. And remind
Uncle Cal that I am to have the wish-bone, or I will not come at all!"

This reply Miss Sarah also read aloud to her brother, in a voice that
was not quite Christian, however, for it was gloating in tone.

"There!" she breathed, "and, Cal, aren't you ashamed sometimes to have
your judgment so often refuted by a mere woman?"

Caleb had been reading in the Morrison Standard that the East Coast
Company had made unbelievable strides in its work, in spite of many
conspiring hard-luck circumstances; he was frowning over that oddly
veiled compliment of Allison's, which his daughter had so innocently
repeated, but he was glad to hear that Dexter, too, planned to run up
for the year-end. He was a bit bored himself. Now he grinned over
another thought.

"She fails to mention whether she ever noticed the color of his eyes,"
he choked a little, "or--or the heart-breaking quality of his voice!
Maybe she hasn't noticed 'em yet herself, eh?"

Miss Sarah scorned to answer. She went upstairs to her desk and she
wrote two letters that night, before she retired. One went back to
Barbara. The other had not so far to travel, but it was longer in
reaching its destination.

CHAPTER XX

BLUE FLANNEL AND CORDUROY

The world was snow-bound--all that small world which lay between the
hills in the valley at Thirty-Mile. For two days it had been snowing,
great flakes so plume-like that they seemed almost artificial, making
one think of the blizzards which originate high in theatre-flies under
the sovereignty of a stage-hand who sweats at his task of controlling
the elements. For two days it snowed so heavily that all work moved
but intermittently at the up-river camp; and then, two days before
Christmas, the mercury dropped sharply into the bulbs and the weather
cleared.

Stephen O'Mara, standing at a window of his cabin late in the
afternoon, peering out upon that cold white world, was wondering if she
would have found it as wonderful as it seemed to him at that moment; he
was wondering whether he would have to