med a culinary inferno. Nothing, she
considered, could be beyond her after that unremitting drudgery.

But Benton failed to come back on the appointed day. The four days
lengthened to a week. Then the _Panther_, bound up-lake, stopped to
leave a brief note from Charlie, telling her business had called him to
Vancouver.

Altogether it was ten days before the _Chickamin_ whistled up the bay.
She slid in beside the float, her decks bristling with men like a
passenger craft. Stella, so thoroughly sated with loneliness that she
temporarily forgot her grievances, flew to meet her brother. But one
fair glimpse of the disembarking crew turned her back. They were all in
varying stages of liquor--from two or three who had to be hauled over
the float and up to the bunkhouse like sacks of bran, to others who were
so happily under the influence of John Barleycorn that every move was
some silly antic. She retreated in disgust. When Charlie reached the
cabin, he himself proved to be fairly mellow, in the best of
spirits--speaking truly in the double sense.

"Hello, lady," he hailed jovially. "How did you fare all by your
lonesome this long time? I didn't figure to be gone so long, but there
was a lot to attend to. How are you, anyway?"

"All right," she answered coolly. "You evidently celebrated your log
delivery in the accepted fashion."

"Don't you believe it," he grinned amiably. "I had a few drinks with the
boys on the way up, that's all. No, sir, it was straight business with
a capital B all the time I was gone. I've got a good thing in hand,
Sis--big money in sight. Tell you about it later. Think you and Katy can
rustle grub for this bunch by six?"

"Oh, I suppose so," she said shortly. It was on the tip of her tongue to
tell him then and there that she was through,--like Matt, the cook, that
memorable afternoon, "completely an' ab-sho-lutely through." She
refrained. There was no use in being truculent. But that drunken crowd
looked formidable in numbers.

"How many extra?" she asked mechanically.

"Thirty men, all told," Benton returned briskly. "I tell you I'm sure
going to rip the heart out of this limit before spring. I've signed up a
six-million-foot contract for delivery as soon as the logs'll go over
Roaring Rapids in the spring. Remember what I told you when you came?
You stick with me, and you'll wear diamonds. I stand to clean up twenty
thousand on the winter's work."

"In that case, you should be able to hi