But she stood looking out the window after he left, uneasy with a prescience of trouble.  She watched with a feverish interest the stir that presently arose about the bunkhouses.  That summer a wide space had been cleared between bungalow and camp.  She could see moving lanterns, and even now and then hear the voices of men calling to each other.  Once the Panther’s dazzling eye of a searchlight swung across the landing, and its beam picked out a file of men carrying their blankets toward the boat.  Shortly after that the tender rounded the point.  Close behind her went the Waterbug, and both boats swarmed with men.

Stella looked and listened until there was but a faint thrum far up the lake.  Then she went to bed, but not to sleep.  What ugly passions were loosed at the lake head she did not know.  But on the face of it she could not avoid wondering if Monohan had deliberately set out to cross and harass Jack Fyfe.  Because of her?  That was the question which had hovered on her lips that evening, one she had not brought herself to ask.  Because of her, or because of some enmity that far preceded her?  She had thought him big enough to do as she had done, as Fyfe was tacitly doing,—­make the best of a grievous matter.

But if he had allowed his passions to dictate reprisals, she trembled for the outcome.  Fyfe was not a man to sit quiet under either affront or injury.  He would fight with double rancor if Monohan were his adversary.

“If anything happens up there, I’ll hate myself,” she whispered, when the ceaseless turning of her mind had become almost unendurable.  “I was a silly, weak fool to ever let Walter Monohan know I cared.  And I’ll hate him too if he makes me a bone of contention.  I elected to play the game the only decent way there is to play it.  So did he.  Why can’t he abide by that?”

Noon of the next day saw the Waterbug heave to a quarter mile abeam of Cougar Point to let off a lone figure in her dinghy, and then bore on, driving straight and fast for Roaring Springs.  Stella flew to the landing.  Mother Howe came puffing at her heels.

“Land’s sake, I been worried to death,” the older woman breathed.  “When men git to quarrellin’ about timber, you never can tell where they’ll stop, Mrs. Jack.  I’ve knowed some wild times in the woods in the past.”

The man in the dink was Lefty Howe.  He pulled in beside the float.  When he stepped up on the planks, he limped perceptibly.

“Land alive, what happened yuh, Lefty?” his wife cried.

“Got a rap on the leg with a peevy,” he said.  “Nothin’ much.”

“Why did the Waterbug go down the lake?” Stella asked breathlessly.  The man’s face was serious.  “What happened up there?”

“There was a fuss,” he answered quietly.  “Three or four of the boys got beat up so they need patchin’.  Jack’s takin’ ’em down to the hospital.  Damn that yeller-headed Monohan!” his voice lifted suddenly in uncontrollable anger.  “Billy Dale was killed this mornin’, mother.”