Time passed quickly and uneventfully enough between the wedding day and the date of her Granada engagement.  It seemed a mere breathing space before the middle of July rolled around, and she was once more aboard a Vancouver boat.  In the interim, she had received a letter from the attorney who had wound up her father’s estate, intimating that there was now a market demand for that oil stock, and asking if he should sell or hold for a rise in price which seemed reasonably sure?  Stella telegraphed her answer.  If that left-over of a speculative period would bring a few hundred dollars, it would never be of greater service to her than now.

All the upper reach of Puget Sound basked in its normal midsummer haze, the day Stella started for Vancouver.  That great region of island-dotted sea spread between the rugged Olympics and the foot of the Coast range lay bathed in summer sun, untroubled, somnolent.  But nearing the international boundary, the Charlotte drove her twenty-knot way into a thickening atmosphere.  Northward from Victoria, the rugged shores that line those inland waterways began to appear blurred.  Just north of Active Pass, where the steamers take to the open gulf again, a vast bank of smoke flung up blue and gray, a rolling mass.  The air was pungent, oppressive.  When the Charlotte spanned the thirty-mile gap between Vancouver Island and the mainland shore, she nosed into the Lion’s Gate under a slow bell, through a smoke pall thick as Bering fog.  Stella’s recollection swung back to Charlie’s uneasy growl of a month earlier.  Fire!  Throughout the midsummer season there was always the danger of fire breaking out in the woods.  Not all the fire-ranger patrols could guard against the carelessness of fishermen and campers.

“It’s a tough Summer over here for the timber owners,” she heard a man remark.  “I’ve been twenty years on the coast and never saw the woods so dry.”

“Dry’s no name,” his neighbor responded.  “It’s like tinder.  A cigarette stub’ll start a blaze forty men couldn’t put out.  It’s me that knows it.  I’ve got four limits on the North Arm, and there’s fire on two sides of me.  You bet I’m praying for rain.”

“They say the country between Chehalis and Roaring Lake is one big blaze,” the first man observed.

“So?” the other replied.  “Pity, too.  Fine timber in there.  I came near buying some timber on the lake this spring.  Some stuff that was on the market as a result of that Abbey-Monohan split.  Glad I didn’t now.  I’d just as soon have all my money out of timber this season.”

They moved away in the press of disembarking, and Stella heard no more of their talk.  She took a taxi to the Granada, and she bought a paper in the foyer before she followed the bell boy to her room.  She had scarcely taken off her hat and settled down to read when the telephone rang.  Linda’s voice greeted her when she answered.

“I called on the chance that you took the morning boat,” Linda said.  “Can I run in?  I’m just down for the day.  I won’t be able to hear you sing, but I’d like to see you, dear.”