re."

Nor did Allison even smile now.

"What makes you think so?" he asked.

Again there came the boy's pat answer.

"I ain't thinkin'," he said. "It's jest there! They're close
set--them trees--and they're clear, clean to the tops. There ain't a
stump there that won't run near ten standard."

Allison squinted and finally nodded his head.

"Maybe," he agreed, "maybe."

But later Caleb saw him enter some figures in his small, black-bound
notebook.

That night the episode was repeated with a bit of variation. They had
set up their tent and made camp, a little before nightfall. Far below
them, hidden by the trees, the east branch cut a threadlike gash
through the center of a valley broad enough and round enough to have
been a veritable amphitheater of the gods. The whole great hollow was
clothed with evergreen, a sea of dripping tops in the semi-gloom, and
Allison, when he had set aside his plate and lighted his pipe, lifted a
hand in a gesture which embraced it all.

"If you weren't so lazy-brained, Cal," he said, "that sight would stir
in you something more than a mere appreciation of what you call the
'sublimity of sheer immensity.' For the man who can look ahead ten or
a dozen years there is an undreamed of fortune right here in this
alley."

Caleb yawned.

"No doubt," he agreed. "But I didn't coin that phrase for immense
fortunes. I guess I'm old-fashioned enough to like it a whole lot
better just as it is."

Then he became suddenly aware of the tense earnestness with which
Stephen O'Mara was listening. And when Allison, thinking aloud, mused
that the cost of driving the timber down the shallow stream to the
far-off mills would be, perhaps, prohibitive, words fairly leaped to
the boy's lips.

"But they--they won't be drivin' that timber by floods, when they git
to tacklin' these here valleys," he exclaimed. "Old Tom ses when they
really git to lumberin' these mountains they'll skid it daown to the
railroad tracks and yank it out by steam!"

That sober statement in the piping voice had a strange effect upon
Allison. He leaned forward, a sort of guarded astonishment in his
attitude, to peer at the childish face in the fire-glow. Then he
seemed to remember that it was just a bit of a woods-waif who had
spoken. But Caleb, who was lazy-brained in some matters, sensed that
Steve had put into words Allison's own unspoken thought, just as
Allison at that moment voiced the question which he wa