he could have believed it impossible,
for it would have given him courage and lent conviction to his stand.
But he knew just how fast those few remaining miles of open roadbed
would be spanned. His eyes were furtive; there was no body to his
voice.

"My men are on the banks," he blustered. "My first head of logs has
started down. It's too late to argue now--too late for your promises
that none but fools ever believed!" The sure irrevocability of what he
was saying blanched his cheeks. "I cannot wait for a miracle to be
performed. My timber must come out on this flood."

Stephen O'Mara had whipped him once, but men had interfered. This day
Chance or Destiny or Fate--whatever you may choose to call it--saved
him from destruction. The lean and weary man who had not been out of
his clothes for three days and three nights, save for a plunge in the
icy river, had taken his first step forward, when the whistle screamed
a nearer warning.

She had told him that she would come to see the finish of his race, but
he had long since stopped believing that. And now when she stood and
waved her hand at him from the brass-railed observation platform of
Allison's private car which a switch engine, out of patience with the
grade, was shunting across the lower end of the clearing, he could only
stand and stare dully, no faith in his eyes.

The loud plaid of her father's garb flashed behind her in the doorway.
Hardwick Elliott's fine face peered over his shoulder. And Wickersham,
who had not seen his fiance in a month, had started toward them,
stiffly erect in his immaculate whipcord habit. Wickersham was
smiling; Wickersham was safe again. For Fate or Chance or Destiny who
had been setting the stage was bringing on her principals. She would
brook no _ad lib_ now.

A low mutter in the north became an ominous murmur while Steve was
following slowly in Wickersham's steps, and he realized what it meant.
He stopped to stare at his handful of men, rearing their heads to
listen, too. Steve had been all winter alone with the puzzle of his
own inferiority which he could never understand. And a minute later,
when he had reached out to help to the ground a little blue clad figure
with fur at throat and wrists, she drew the be-furred edge of her skirt
about her ankles and laughingly refused his assistance, and jumped to
the ground unaided. She was far too excited to know what she was
doing; she hardly saw him at all in that first