“Yes.  That’s where I hail from.  And, as you say, there’s big stuff up there, too.”

“Big?  Why I’d say.  Well, now!  That’s fine!  I’ve heard tell big yarns of Labrador.  It’s just great meeting—­”

The man broke off at the sound of the first blast of the dressing bugle.

“Why, it’s later than I guessed,” he said.  “Anyway, you’ll take a cocktail with me?  This vessel’s good and wet, thanks be to Providence, and the high seas being peopled with fish instead of cranks.  I hadn’t a notion I was goin’ to run into a real lumberman on this trip.  It’s done me a power of good.”

* * * * *

Aylin P. Cantor was a diverting creature for all his appearance of ostentatious prosperity.  Good fortune had undoubtedly been his, and his whole being seemed to have become absorbed in the trade which had so generously treated him.  Before the cocktail was consumed Bull had listened to a long story of British Columbia, and forests of incomparable extent.  He had also learned that a country estate, miles in extent, outside the city of Vancouver, and the luxuries associated with the multi-millionaire had fallen to the lot of Aylin P. Cantor.  But somehow there was no offence in it all.  The man was just a bubbling fount of enthusiasm and delight that this was so.  He simply had to talk of it.

But the acquaintance was not to terminate over a cocktail.  Shipboard offers few avenues of escape to the man seeking to avoid another.  So it came that Bull found himself sipping a brandy, reputed to be one hundred years old, over his coffee after dinner, while Aylin P. Cantor told him the story of how it came into his possession at something far below its market value.

Later, again, while the auction pool was being sold, he found himself ensconced on a lounge in a far corner of the smokeroom beside his fellow craftsman, still listening chiefly, and absorbing fact and anecdote pertaining to a successful lumberman’s life.  And it was nearly eleven o’clock, and the pool had been sold, and the bulk of the occupants of the smoking-room were contemplating their last rubber of Auction Bridge, when the busy-minded westerner consented to abandon his particular venue for a brief contemplation of the despised East.

“Oh, I guess there’s money in your territory, too,” he condescended at last.  “I ain’t a word to say against the stuff I’ve heard tell of Labrador.  But you’re froze up more’n ha’f the year.  That’s your trouble.”

“Yes.”

Bull nodded over the latter portion of his third cigar which Mr. Cantor had not permitted him to escape.

“Sure,” the man laughed.  “Oh, the stuff’s there.  I know that.  But Labrador needs a mighty big nerve to exploit.  I heard it all from a feller I met when I was prospecting Quebec.  You see, I had the notion of playing a million dollars in the Quebec forests once.  But I weakened.  I kind of fancied my chance against the Frenchies didn’t amount to cold water on a red hot cookstove.  I cut it out and hunted my own patch, West, again.  But I guess I’d have fallen for the stories of Labrador, if it hadn’t been for the feller who put me wise.”