“The can,” finished Miss Marion gravely.  “But what I want to know is, what have you done?”

“Done?” Jack’s jaw dropped slack away from the pipestem.  “What yuh mean, done?”

“Yes.  What have you done that they should put you up here and make you stay up here?  It sounds—­”

“Now, even a tourist knows that this is a Forest Service lookout station, and that I’m here to watch out for fires down below!  I’m your guardian angel, young lady.  Treat me with respect, if not with kindness.”

“I’m a member of the no-treat reform club.  Honestly, don’t they let you leave here at all?”

“Four days a month.”  He heaved a heavy sigh and waved his pipe toward the great outdoors. “’S big world, when it’s all spread out in sight,” he volunteered.

“Can’t you—­can’t you even go down to the lake and fish, when you want to?”

“Nope.  Four days a month—­and if they didn’t happen to have a spare man lying round handy, to send up here to take my place, I couldn’t go then even.”

Marion regarded him meditatively.  “You can have an hour’s recess now, if you like,” she offered generously after a minute.  “I’ll stay and answer the phone, and stand them off if they want to talk to you.  I’m good at that.  You can go and climb down to the lake and fish, and have fun.”

“Tell me to go and jump in the lake and I might do it,” Jack returned gloomily.  He found it rather pleasant to be sympathized with and pitied.  “What if a fire broke out while I was gone?”

“Well, what if?  I could do what you would do, couldn’t I?  What do you do when a fire breaks out?”

That gave Jack a fair excuse for leaving his place by the shelf, and coming around to her side of the table, and for taking the pointer from her and standing close beside her while he explained the chart.  Needless to say, he made use of the excuse immediately.

“First off,” he instructed, “you don’t want to be a boob and go reporting train smoke, like I did the first day I was here.  Picked up a black smoke down below, here—­right down there!  I got the number on the chart and phoned it in, and the lookout on Claremont didn’t yeep about it.  So they called up and asked him to come alive and report.  By that time the smoke had moved from where I saw it, and the whole train was in sight from his station, coming round the hill into Marston.  He never thought of that being it, he said afterward.  They got busy in the office and called me up again, and I located her again—­only in a different place.  Fellow on Claremont—­that’s it away over there; see that white speck?  That’s the station, just like this one.  He’s an old crab, Hank tells me.  He said I must be bugs.  Had him squinting around some, I bet!  Then they got wise that I was reporting a through freight, and they kid me about it yet.  But they fell for it at first all right!”

“What do you know about that!” Marion melodiously exclaimed, and laughed companionably.