outfit with two big logging camps, my outfit, Jack Fyfe's, some hand
loggers on the east shore, and the R.A.T. at the head of the lake.
That's the population--and Roaring Lake is forty-two miles long and
eight wide."

"Are there any nice girls around?" she asked.

Benton grinned widely.

"Girls?" said he. "Not so you could notice. Outside the Springs and the
hatchery over the way, there isn't a white woman on the lake except
Lefty Howe's wife,--Lefty's Jack Fyfe's foreman,--and she's fat and past
forty. I told you it was a God-forsaken hole as far as society is
concerned, Stell."

"I know," she said thoughtfully. "But one can scarcely realize such
a--such a social blankness, until one actually experiences it. Anyway, I
don't know but I'll appreciate utter quiet for awhile. But what do you
do with yourself when you're not working?"

"There's seldom any such time," he answered. "I tell you, Stella, I've
got a big job on my hands. I've got a definite mark to shoot at, and I'm
going to make a bull's-eye in spite of hell and high water. I have no
time to play, and there's no place to play if I had. I don't intend to
muddle along making a pittance like a hand logger. I want a stake; and
then it'll be time to make a splurge in a country where a man can get a
run for his money."

"If that's the case," she observed, "I'm likely to be a handicap to you,
am I not?"

"Lord, no," he smiled. "I'll put you to work too, when you get rested up
from your trip. You stick with me, Sis, and you'll wear diamonds."

She laughed with him at this, and leaving the shady maple they walked up
to the hotel, where Benton proposed that they get a canoe and paddle to
where Roaring River flowed out of the lake half a mile westward, to kill
the time that must elapse before the three-thirty train.

The St. Allwoods' car was rolling out to Hopyard when they came back. By
the time Benton had turned the canoe over to the boathouse man and
reached the wharf, the horn of the returning machine sounded down the
road. They waited. The car came to a stop at the abutting wharf. The
driver handed two suitcases off the burdened hood of his machine. From
out the tonneau clambered a large, smooth-faced young man. He wore an
expansive smile in addition to a blue serge suit, white Panama, and
polished tan Oxfords, and he bestowed a hearty greeting upon Charlie
Benton. But his smile suffered eclipse, and a faint flush rose in his
round cheeks, when his eyes