have grabbed well-nigh the whole of this country’s pulp industry, and we’ll beat the foreigners right back over the sea to their own country.  The Skandinavia folk are rattled.  They know all about us and they’ve done their best to buy us out of the game.  We turned ’em down cold, and they’re mad—­mad as hell.  It means they’re in for the fight of their lives.  So are we.  And we know Peterman an’ his gang well enough to know what that means.  It’s ‘rough an’ tough.’  Everything goes.  If they can’t gouge our eyes they’ll do their best to chew us to small meat.  But we’ve got ’em every way.  This forest gang is sent by the Skandinavia.  If they can’t smash us by fire or labour trouble next year’ll see us floated into a seventy million dollar corporation with the whole Canadian wood-pulp industry lying right in the palms of our hands.  That’s the reason for the things doing.”

He paused, and the camp-boss nodded his rough head.  It was a story he could clearly understand.  Then there were those figures.  Seventy million dollars!  They swept the last shadow of doubt from his mind.

“That’s the position,” Bull went on.  “Now for the trouble as it is in the forests right now.  The thing that’s had me travelling night an’ day for a month.  There’s an outfit going right through these forests.  I can’t locate its extent.  Only the way it works.  There’s two objects in view.  One is to fire our limits.  The other reckons to paralyse our cut.  So far these folks have failed against the fire-guard organisation, and I guess they’ll likely miss most of their fire-bugs when they call the roll.  The other’s different.”

Bull knocked out his pipe on the stove and gazed thoughtfully at the streak of brilliant light under the edge of the front damper.

“I’ve a notion there’s an outfit of pedlars at work, as well as others,” he went on presently.

The camp-boss nodded.

“Sure,” he said.

Bull looked up.

“You think that way?” he asked.  Then he nodded.  “Yes, I guess we’re right.  They’re handing the boys dope to keep ’em guessing—­worrying.  They’re telling ’em we’re on the edge of a big smash at Sachigo.  That we can’t see the winter through.  We’re cleaned out for cash, and the mill folk are shouting for their wages and starting in to riot.  It’s a swell yarn.  It’s the sort of yarn I’d tell ’em myself if I was working for the Skandinavia.  It’s the sort of dope these crazy forest-jacks are ready to swallow the same as if it was Rye.  Do you see?  These fools are being told they won’t get their pay for their winter’s cut.  So, being what they are, the boys are going slow.  They’re going slow, and drawing goods at the store against each cord they cut.  Well, do you see what’s going to happen if the game succeeds?  With our forests ablaze, and our cut fifty down, and the whole outfit on the buck, when spring comes, Skandinavia reckons our British financiers, when they come along