“This is Mr. Lee,” said Merker, “and he wants to make arrangements with you to set up a little cleat and box-stuff mill, and use from your dump.”

Mr. Lee, it turned out, had been sent up by an informal association of the fruit growers of the valley.  Said informal association had been formed by Merker through the mails.  The store-keeper had submitted such convincing figures that Lee had been dispatched to see about it.  It looked cheaper in the long run to send up a spare harvesting engine, to buy a saw, and to cut up box and tray stuff than to purchase these necessities from the regular dealers.  Would Mr. Welton negotiate?  Mr. Welton did.  Before long the millmen were regaled by the sight of a snorting little upright engine connected by a flapping, sagging belt to a small circular saw.  Two men and two boys worked like beavers.  The racket and confusion, shouts, profanity and general awkwardness were something tremendous.  Nevertheless, the pile of stock grew, and every once in a while six-horse farm wagons from the valley would climb the mountain to take away box material enough to pack the fruit of a whole district.  To Merker this was evidently a profound satisfaction.  Often he would vary his usual between-customer reverie by walking out on his shaded verandah, where he would lean against an upright, nursing the bowl of his pipe, gazing across the sawdust to the diminutive and rackety box-plant in the distance.

Welton, passing one day, laughed at him.

“How about your economic waste, Merker?” he called.  “Two good men could turn out three times the stuff all that gang does in about half the time.”

“There are no two good men for that job,” replied Merker unmoved.  His large, cowlike eyes roved across the yards.  “Men grow in a generation; trees grow in ten,” he resumed with unexpected directness.  “I have calculated that of a great tree but 40 per cent. is used.  All the rest is economic waste—­slabs, edging, tops, stumps, sawdust.”  He sighed.  “I couldn’t get anybody to consider your toothpick and matches idea, nor the wooden soldiers, nor even the shingles,” he ended.

Welton stared.

“You didn’t quote me in the matter, did you?” he asked at length.

“I did not take the matter as official.  Would I have done better to have done so?”

“Lord, no!” cried Welton fervently.

“The sawdust ought to make something,” continued Merker.  “But I am unable to discover a practical use for it.”  He indicated the great yellow mound that each day increased.

“Yes, I got to get a burner for it,” said Welton, “it’ll soon swamp us.”

“There might be power in it,” mused Merker.  “A big furnace, now——­”

“For heaven’s sake, man, what for?” demanded Welton.

“I don’t know yet,” answered the store-keeper.