in noisily to the wash-bench, he was
sitting there in the dark--thinking.

* * * * *

The results of Daddy Dunnigan's cooking were soon evident in the Blood
River camp. Men no longer returned to the bunk-house growling and
cursing the grub, and Moncrossen noted with satisfaction that the daily
cut was steadily climbing toward the eighty-thousand mark.

The boss added a substantial bonus for each day's "top cut," and in the
lengthening days an intense rivalry sprang up between the sawyers; not
infrequently Bill and Fallon were "in on the money."

It was nearly two weeks after the incident, that Creed came to
Moncrossen with his own story of what happened that night at Melton's
No. 8, and the boss knew that he lied.

As they talked in the little office the greener, accompanied by Fallon,
passed close to the window.

At the sight of the man the spotter's face became pasty, and he shrank
trembling and wide-eyed, as from the sight of a ghost, and Moncrossen
knew that his abject terror was not engendered by physical fear.

He flew into a rage, cursing and bullying the craven, but failed
utterly to dispel the unwholesome fear or to shake the other's repeated
statement that at a few minutes past ten o'clock that night he had seen
the greener lying hopelessly drunk upon the floor of the shack with the
flames roaring about him, and at six o'clock the next evening had seen
him hobble into Burrage's store, forty miles to the southward, fresh
and apparently unharmed save for his injured foot.

Moncrossen's hatred of the greener rested primarily upon the fear that
one day he would expose him to Appleton; added to this was a mighty
jealousy of his rapid rise to proficiency and the rankling memory of
the scene of their first meeting in the grub-shack.

But his fear of him was a physical fear--a fear born of the certain
knowledge that, measured by his own standards, the greener was the
better man.

And now came the perplexing question as to how the man had reached
Hilarity when Creed was known to have arrived there with the team eight
hours after the burning of the shack.

The boss had carefully verified so much of Creed's story by a guarded
pumping of Dunnigan, and the crafty old Irishman took keen delight in
so wording his answers, and interspersing them with knowing winks and
quirks of the head, as to add nothing to the boss's peace of mind.

While not sharing Creed's belief in t