me he broke the surface, but coming at last tamely to
Jack Fyfe's landing net. Of outdoor sports she knew most about angling,
for her father had been an ardent fly-caster. And she had observed with
a true angler's scorn the efforts of her brother's loggers to catch the
lake trout with a baited hook, at which they had scant success. Charlie
never fished. He had neither time nor inclination for such fooling, as
he termed it. Fyfe stopped fishing when the donkeys whistled six. It
happened that when he drew in to his cookhouse float, Stella was
standing in her kitchen door. Fyfe looked up at her and held aloft a
dozen trout strung by the gills on a stick, gleaming in the sun.

"Vanity," she commented inaudibly. "I wonder if he thinks I've been
admiring his skill as a fisherman?"

Nevertheless she paid tribute to his skill when ten minutes later he
sent a logger with the entire catch to her kitchen. They looked
toothsome, those lakers, and they were. She cooked one for her own
supper and relished it as a change from the everlasting bacon and ham.
In the face of that million feet of timber, Benton hunted no deer. True,
the Siwashes had once or twice brought in some venison. That, with a
roast or two of beef from town, was all the fresh meat she had tasted in
two months. There were enough trout to make a breakfast for the crew.
She ate hers and mentally thanked Jack Fyfe.

Lying in her bed that night, in the short interval that came between
undressing and wearied sleep, she found herself wondering with a good
deal more interest about Jack Fyfe than she had ever bestowed
upon--well, Paul Abbey, for instance.

She was quite positive that she was going to dislike Jack Fyfe if he
were thrown much in her way. There was something about him that she
resented. The difference between him and the rest of the rude crew among
which she must perforce live was a question of degree, not of kind.
There was certainly some compelling magnetism about the man. But along
with it went what she considered an almost brutal directness of speech
and action. Part of this conclusion came from hearsay, part from
observation, limited though her opportunities had been for the latter.
Miss Stella Benton, for all her poise, was not above jumping at
conclusions. There was something about Jack Fyfe that she resented. She
irritably dismissed it as a foolish impression, but the fact remained
that the mere physical nearness of him seemed to put her on the
defe