Bull stirred restlessly.

“Oh, psha!” he cried at last, with a force that displayed the tremendous feeling he could no longer deny.  “I know what you think, Bat.  I’m crazy.  Well, maybe I am.  Most men get crazy one time in their lives when a woman gets around.  It’s no use.  I just can’t help it.  I know all you’re thinking.  Nancy McDonald belongs to our enemies.  As you say she’s done her damnedest to break us.  Maybe you reckon I ought to feel for her like the devil does about holy water.  Well, I don’t.  I’m plumb crazy for her, and when spring clears up the waters of the Cove, and the Myra comes alongside, she’s going right aboard, and will pass out of Labrador and out of my life.  I’m never going to get another sight of her.  I’m never going to get another sound of her dandy voice, or a sight of her pretty eyes, and—­Hell!  What’s the use.  Oh, I know it all.  You’ve no need to tell me.  We’ve made good.  We’ve fought and won out.  My contract’s complete, and everything’s looking just as good for us as it knows how—­now.  This mill.  It’s ours.  Yours, and mine, and that other’s, who I don’t know about.  All I’ve to do is to sit around with the plums lying in my lap.  Well, I don’t want those plums without Nancy.  That’s all.  I don’t want a thing—­without Nancy.  All the dollars in America can burn in hell for all I care, and as for groundwood pulp it’s a damp mess of fool stuff that don’t signify to me if it finds its way to the bottom of the North Atlantic.  An added month of open season?  What does it mean to me?  Work.  Only work, and flies, and skitters.  An added month of ’em.  Father Adam’s a whole man again now, thanks to that dandy child.  He’ll pull right out to the forests again, and—­she’ll pull out too.  I—­”

“That’s all right,” Bat broke in drily.  “I get all that.  But why not marry the gal?  Marry her an’ quit all this darn argument.  I guess this mill’s goin’ to hand you all you need to keep a wife on.  That seems to me the natural answer to the stuff that’s worryin’ you.”

His eyes twinkled as he regarded the other’s troubled face.

“Is it?”

Bull was on his feet.  Hot, desperate irritation lay behind the retort which Bat’s gentle sarcasm had drawn forth.  His eyes were alight, and he passed an unsteady hand across his forehead in a superlatively impatient gesture.

“Marry her?” he exploded.  “Say, are you every sort of darn fool on God’s earth, man?  How can I hope to marry her?  What sort of use can a girl like that have for the man who’s beat her right out of everything she ever hoped to achieve?  I’ve had to treat her like any old criminal, and hold her prisoner.  I’ve brought her right down here leaving her in a man’s household without another woman in sight.  Say, these cursed mills have made it so I’ve had to commit every sort of rotten act a man can commit against a high-spirited girl.  And you ask me why I don’t marry her?  You’ve been too long in the forests, Bat.  Guess you’ve lost your perspective.  Nancy McDonald’s no sort of chattel to be dealt with any way we fancy.  Get sense, man, an’ talk it.”