room
boasted, and Wentworth leaned against the counter, a half-sneering
smile on his lips. McNabb advanced to the group beneath the huge
swinging lamp, and Sven Larsen lingered in the shadows near the door.
The half-sneer changed to a look of open defiance, as Wentworth faced
McNabb. "It seems," he said truculently, "that I am guilty of a
serious _faux pas_ in mentioning a bit of Terrace City scandal that
reached my ears concerning the elopement of your estimable fur clerk,
Hedin, and a Russian sable coat. The idiot didn't have the brains to
get away with it. If you'd have been wiser you would have waited until
you could have laid hands on the coat, and then locked up your fur
clerk."

"H-m-m, maybe ye're right," answered McNabb.

"And," continued Wentworth, emboldened by the placidity of the other's
tone, "if you had been wiser, you wouldn't have lost your pulp-wood
holdings. Oh, there's no use beating about the bush--I knew the minute
Jean told me you had come in by the tote-road, that you had seen the
Eureka trucks hauling in Eureka material. We put one over on you,
McNabb, and you might as well be a sport and make the best of it."

The old Scot nodded thoughtfully. "Maybe ye're right," he admitted.
"But wasn't it a bit scurvy trick ye played me, acceptin' my money an'
usin' it to double-cross me?"

"Business, my dear man! Merely business! I saw my chance, and I took
it, that's all. Ten thousand a year, and a ten percent interest in a
paper mill isn't so poor--and I'm not yet thirty. It takes brains to
make money, and you can bet I'll make my money before my brain begins
to slip cogs. It's expensive--this slipping of cogs."

"Maybe ye're right," repeated McNabb.

"I'll tell the world I'm right! It won't be but a few years till I'll
be the big noise around this part of Canada! Brains to figure out a
proposition, and nerve to carry it through--that's all it takes to make
this old world pay up what it owes you."

"How he hates himself!" exclaimed Jean, and from his position in the
shadows, Hedin saw that her eyes flashed.

His heart gave a great bound, and it was with an effort that he
restrained himself from pushing into the group. Was it possible--? A
step sounded outside, and the next moment the screen door swung open to
admit the figure of a man who strode into the lamp-light and glanced
about the faces of the assembly.

The man was Cameron.

"A fine two days' stay you made of your tri