o the point of exasperation. Nevertheless, she lightened the day's
labor, and Stella put up with her slowness since she needs must or
assume the entire burden herself. This time Katy thoughtlessly left with
both water pails empty.

Stella was just picking them up off the bench when a shadow darkened the
door, and she looked around to see Jack Fyfe.

"How d' do," he greeted.

He had seemed a short man. Now, standing within four feet of her, she
perceived that this was an illusion created by the proportion and
thickness of his body. He was, in fact, half a head taller than she, and
Stella stood five feet five. His gray eyes met hers squarely, with a
cool, impersonal quality of gaze. There was neither smirk nor
embarrassment in his straightforward glance. He was, in effect, "sizing
her up" just as he would have looked casually over a logger asking him
for a job. Stella sensed that, and resenting it momentarily, failed to
match his manner. She flushed. Fyfe smiled, a broad, friendly grin, in
which a wide mouth opened to show strong, even teeth.

"I'm after a drink," he said quite impersonally, and coolly taking the
pails out of her hands, walked through the kitchen and down to the
creek. He was back in a minute, set the filled buckets in their place,
and helped himself with a dipper.

"Say," he asked easily, "how do you like life in a logging camp by this
time? This is sure one hot job you've got."

"Literally or slangily?" she asked in a flippant tone. Fyfe's
reputation, rather vividly colored, had reached her from various
sources. She was not quite sure whether she cared to countenance him or
not. There was a disturbing quality in his glance, a subtle suggestion
of force about him that she felt without being able to define in
understandable terms. In any case she felt more than equal to the task
of squelching any effort at familiarity, even if Jack Fyfe were, in a
sense, the convenient god in her brother's machine. Fyfe chuckled at
her answer.

"Both," he replied shortly and went out.

She saw him a little later out on the bay in the _Panther's_ dink,
standing up in the little boat, making long, graceful casts with a
pliant rod. She perceived that this manner of fishing was highly
successful, insomuch as at every fourth or fifth cast a trout struck his
fly, breaking water with a vigorous splash. Then the bamboo would arch
as the fish struggled, making sundry leaps clear of the water, gleaming
like silver each ti