To himself Neale thought, “He’d call it bolshevism if he met it today . . .”

“. . . second building erected in the new settlement, 1766, as a fort. . . .  No, no, Mr. Marsh, not against the Indians!  Our early settlers here never had any trouble with the Indians.”

Neale laughed to himself at the clergyman’s resentment of any ignorance of any detail of Ashley’s unimportant history.

“. . . as a fort against the York State men in the land-grant quarrels with New Hampshire and New York, before the Revolution.”  Neale, smiling inwardly, bet himself a nickel that neither of the two strangers had ever heard of the Vermont land-grant quarrels, and found himself vastly tickled by the profound silence they kept on the subject.  They were evidently scared to death of starting old Bayweather off on another line.  They were safe enough, if they only knew it.  It was inconceivable to Mr. Bayweather that any grown person should not know all about early Vermont history.

At this point Marise came out of the office, her face between laughter and exasperation.  She clasped her hands together and said, “Can’t you do anything?”

“In a minute,” he told her.  “I’ll just finish these two letters and then I’ll go and break him off short.”

Marise went on to the accountant’s desk, to ask about his wife, who sang in her winter chorus.

He dictated rapidly:  “No more contracts will go out to you if this stripping of the mountain-land continues.  Our original contract has in it the clause which I always insist on, that trees smaller than six inches through the butt shall not be cut.  You will please give your choppers definite orders on this point, and understand that logs under the specified size will not be accepted at the mill.”  He held out to the stenographer the letter he was answering.  “Here, Arthur, copy the name and address off this.  It’s one of those French-Canadian names, hard to spell if you don’t see it.”

He paused an instant to hear how far Mr. Bayweather had progressed, and heard him saying, “In the decade from 1850 on, there was a terrible and scandalous devastation of the mountain-land . . .” and said to himself, “Halfway through the century.  I’ll have time to go on a while.  All ready, Arthur.”  He dictated:  “On birch brush-backs of the model specified, we can furnish you any number up to . . .”  He wound his way swiftly and surely through a maze of figures and specifications without consulting a paper or record, and drawing breath at the end, heard Mr. Bayweather pronouncing his own name. “. . .  Mr. Crittenden has taught us all a great deal about the economic aspects of a situation with which we had had years of more familiarity than he.  His idea is that this mountainous part of New England is really not fit for agriculture.  Farming in the usual sense has been a losing venture ever since the Civil War high prices for wool ceased.  Only the bottoms