“The camps are all in full cut.  They’re not a cord behind.”

Bat looked for a word, the lighting of an eye.  There was none.  And he stirred in his chair, and exasperation drove him.

“Don’t it make you feel good?” he demanded sharply.  “It’s the last guess answered, unless there’s a guess when that boy, Birchall, comes along.  Anyway, you don’t figger ther’s much guess to that, with the mill runnin’ full, an’ every boom crashed full of logs.  No.  Here, Bull!” he cried, with sudden vehemence.  “Turn around, man.  Turn right around an’ get a grip on it all.  The game’s won to the last detail.  Can’t you feel good?  Can’t you feel like a feller gettin’ out into the light after years of the darkest hell?  Don’t it make you want to holler?  Ain’t there a thing I can say to boost you?  The boys down at the mill are hoggin’ work.  The groundwood’s on the quays like mountains.  The mills are roaring like blast furnaces.  Can you beat it?  Spring.  The flies an’ skitters, an’ shipping.  Why, in a week I guess Father Adam’ll be hittin the trail for the forests, an’—­”

“Nancy McDonald will be sailing for Quebec.”

Bat was no longer gazing on the other’s broad back and the mane of hair which did its best to conceal his massive neck.  Bull had turned.  His strong face was flushed.  His fine eyes were hot.  There could be no mistaking the passionate emotion which the other had stirred.

The two men gazed into each other’s eyes.  Then with a curiously expressive gesture of his great hands Bull turned to the chair standing near, and flung himself into it.

The lumberman’s eyes twinkled.  He had done the thing he desired.  “An’ you don’t want her to?” he said deliberately.

Just for a moment it looked as though a headlong outburst was about to reply to him.  Then, quite suddenly, the hot light in Bull’s eyes died out and he smiled.  He shook his head.

“No,” he said in simple denial.  “If she goes it means the end of Sachigo for me.”

“You reckon you’ll quit?”

In a moment the lumberman remembered a scene which had been enacted years ago on the high ground on the north shore of the Cove.  He would never forget it.  It had been the final decision of another to quit Sachigo.  And the reason had been not dissimilar.

There was no reply.  Bull sat staring blankly in front of him.  His eyes were on the wintry sky which was still broad with the light of day beyond the window.

Presently his gaze lost its abstraction and came again to the strong, lined face of the older man.  “Yes, Bat,” he said calmly, almost coldly, “I’d have to quit.  I just couldn’t stand for it.  Nancy’s got right into my life.  She’s the only thing I can see—­now.”

“Fer all she’s a kind of prisoner right here, caught red-hand doin’ the damnedest she knows to break us in favour of the outfit that pays her?”

Bat smiled as he flung his challenge.  But his tone, his words, were no indication of his mood, or of the rapid thought passing behind his shrewd eyes.  A great sense of pleasure was asurge within him.  He wanted to tell of it.  He wanted to reach out and grip the other’s hand, and tell him all that his words meant to him.  But he refrained.  Another man’s secret was involved, and that was sufficient.  His lips were sealed.