“That’s going to make my talk harder,” she said.  “I’m sorry.  But there,” she went on.  “It doesn’t really matter, does it?  Anyway I want to tell you right away of the craze the sight of your splendid Sachigo has started buzzing in my head.  Say, Mr. Sternford, it beats anything I ever dreamed, and I want to say that there’s no one in the Skandinavia, from Mr. Peterman downwards, has the littlest notion of it.  It’s not a mill.  It’s a world of real, civilised enterprise.  And it’s set here where you’d look for the roughest of forest life.  I just had no idea.”

It was all said spontaneously.  And the pleasure it gave was obvious in the man’s eyes.  He nodded.

“Yes,” he said.  “The construction of this mill, here on Labrador, isn’t short of genius by a yard.  And the genius of it lies where you won’t guess.”

Nancy’s pretty eyes were mildly searching.

“You’re the head of Sachigo,” she suggested.

Bull’s eyes lit.

“Sure,” he cried, “an’ I’m mighty proud that’s so.  But I’m not the genius of this great mill.  No.  That grizzled, tough old lumberman who toted you along up from the quayside is the brain of this organisation.  He’s a—­wonder.  There’s times I want to laff when I think of it.  There’s times I’m most ready to cry.  You see, you don’t know that great feller.  I’m just beginning to guess I do.  He’s a heart as big as a house, and the manner to scare a ‘hold-up.’  He’s the grit of a reg’ment of soldiers and the mutton softness of a kid girl.  He’s the brain of a Solomon, and the illiteracy of a one day school kid.  He’s all those things, and he’s the biggest proposition in men I’ve ever heard tell about.  It’s kind of tough.  Don’t you feel that way?  He’ll suck a pint of tobacco juice in the day, and blaspheme till your ears get on edge.  And while your folks are guessing he’ll put through a proposition that ’ud leave ha’f the world gasping.”

Nancy stirred.  This man’s whole-hearted appreciation of another was something rather fine in her simple philosophy.  The last thing she had contemplated in approaching the head of a rival enterprise was such talk as this.  But somehow it seemed to fit the man.  Somehow as she noted the squarely gazing eyes, and the power in every line of his features, she realised that whatever lines he chose to talk on, nothing could change the decision lying behind it all.  She liked him all the better for that, and found herself drawing comparison between him and Elas Peterman to the latter’s detriment.

“I like that,” she cried impulsively.  Then the colour rose in her cheeks at the thought of her temerity.  “I guess he’s all you say.  Maybe some day I’ll hear his side of things.  I’d like to.  You see—­I felt I’d known him years when he brought me in here.  Maybe you won’t understand what that implies.”

“I think I do.”

Bull stood up from his chair and passed round his desk.