awaiting their cargoes.  Some day we’ll have our own ships—­a big fleet of ’em.  See the smoke pennants floating from our smoke stacks.  They’re the triumphant pennants of successful industry, eh?  We can’t have too many such flags flying.  One day we’ll have trolley cars running along the shores of the cove to bring the workers in to the mill.  It’ll be like a veritable Atlantic City.  Oh, it’s a great big dream.  There’s nothing amiss.  No.”

“Only the Lizzie getting in.”

Bat was without apparent appreciation.  He was thinking only of the message they had received, and the threat it contained.

Standing glanced round at the sturdy figure beside him.  A half smile lit his sallow features.  Then he turned again and sought out the tubby vessel approaching the wharf below.  But it was only for a moment.  Some subtle thought impelled him, and he glanced back at the house on the hillside he had just left, the house he had erected for the woman whose devotion had taught him the real meaning of life.

It was a long, low, rambling, gabled building.  It was an extensive timber-built home with a wide verandah and those many vanities and conceits of building that would never have been permitted had it been intended for bachelordom.  He remembered how Nancy and he had designed it together.  He remembered the delight with which they had looked forward to its completion, and ultimately their boundless joy in the task of its furnishing.  He remembered how Nancy had insisted that it should contain not only their home, but his own private office, from which he could control the great work he had set his hand to.  It had been her ardent desire to be always near him, always there to support him under the burden of his immense labours.  And remembering these things a fierce desire leapt within him, and he turned again to the man at his side.

“Yes, she’s getting in, Bat,” he said.  “But I just wanted to get a peek at things.  Well, I’ve seen all I want, old friend.  Now I’m ready.  Fight?  Oh, yes, I’m ready to fight.  Come on.”  And he laughed as he hurried down the woodland trail to the water-side.

* * * * *

The two men had reached the quay-side, which was lined with bales of wood-pulp stacked ready for shipment.  Farther down its length the cranes were rattling their chains, swinging their burdens out over the holds of the vessel taking in its moist cargo.  The stevedores were vociferously busy, working against time.  For, in the brief open season, time was the very essence of the success demanded for the mills.  The noise, the babel of it all was usually the choicest music to Standing and his manager.

But just now they were less heeding.  Their eyes were turned upon the small steamer plugging its deliberate way over the water towards them.  It was a small, heavily-built tub of a vessel calculated to survive the worst Atlantic storms.