some unacknowledged loyalty to the soil, the barren soil which
had borne them, some inarticulate affection which had lived through
the heat and rage of their embattled lives. The taproot had been too
deep for them to break off, and now from it there was springing up
this unexpected stem, this sole survivor of their race who turned
away from what had been the flaming breath of life in their brazen
nostrils, back to the green fragrance of their mutilated and forgotten
forests.

Not the least of the charm of this conception for Sylvia came from
the fact that she quarried it out for herself from the bare narration
presented to her, that she read it not at all in the words, but in the
voice, the face, the manner of the raconteur. She was amused, she was
touched, she was impressed by his studiously matter-of-fact version of
his enterprise. He put forward with the shy, prudish shamefacedness of
the New Englander the sound financial basis of his undertaking, as its
main claim on his interest, as its main value. "I heard so much about
forestry being nothing but a rich man's plaything," he said. "I just
got my back up, and wanted to see if it couldn't be made a paying
thing. And I've proved it can be. I've had the closest account kept of
income and outgo, and so far from being a drain on a man to reforest
his woodland and administer it as he should, there's an actual profit
in it, enough to make a business of it, enough to occupy a man for his
lifetime and his son after him, if he gives it his personal care."

At this plain statement of a comprehensible fact, Arnold's inattention
gave place to a momentary interest. "Is there?" he asked with
surprise. "How much?"

"Well," said Page, "my system, as I've gradually worked it out, is to
clear off a certain amount each year of our mediocre woodland, such as
for the most part grows up where the bad cutting was done a couple of
generations ago--maple and oak and beech it is, mostly, with little
stands of white birch, where fires have been. I work that up in my
own sawmill so as to sell as little of a raw product as possible; and
dispose of it to the wood-working factories in the region." (Sylvia
remembered the great "brush-back factory" whence Molly had recruited
her fire-fighters.) "Then I replant that area to white pine. That's
the best tree for this valley. I put about a thousand trees to the
acre. Or if there seems to be a good prospect of natural reproduction,
I try for that. The