McNabb nodded.  “I guess ye’re right, about not goin’ back to the store,” he said slowly.  “Your heart is in the North.”

There was a strange lump in Hedin’s throat.  He glanced into the face of his employer, and was surprised at a certain softness in the shrewd gray eyes that gazed far out over the lake.  After a time the old man spoke, more to himself than to him.  “Ye could both run down for a month or two in the winter!”

“What?” asked Hedin, regarding the speaker with a puzzled expression.  “Both of who?  A factor only gets away in the summer.”

“So they do—­so they do,” answered McNabb, absently.  “Well, we’ll be goin’ back now.  My engineer, maybe, will be wantin’ a conference.”

XXIV

A rather strained silence greeted the entrance of McNabb into the trading room.  Jean and Murchison occupied the only two chairs the room boasted, and Wentworth leaned against the counter, a half-sneering smile on his lips.  McNabb advanced to the group beneath the huge swinging lamp, and Sven Larsen lingered in the shadows near the door.  The half-sneer changed to a look of open defiance, as Wentworth faced McNabb.  “It seems,” he said truculently, “that I am guilty of a serious faux pas in mentioning a bit of Terrace City scandal that reached my ears concerning the elopement of your estimable fur clerk, Hedin, and a Russian sable coat.  The idiot didn’t have the brains to get away with it.  If you’d have been wiser you would have waited until you could have laid hands on the coat, and then locked up your fur clerk.”

“H-m-m, maybe ye’re right,” answered McNabb.

“And,” continued Wentworth, emboldened by the placidity of the other’s tone, “if you had been wiser, you wouldn’t have lost your pulp-wood holdings.  Oh, there’s no use beating about the bush—­I knew the minute Jean told me you had come in by the tote-road, that you had seen the Eureka trucks hauling in Eureka material.  We put one over on you, McNabb, and you might as well be a sport and make the best of it.”

The old Scot nodded thoughtfully.  “Maybe ye’re right,” he admitted.  “But wasn’t it a bit scurvy trick ye played me, acceptin’ my money an’ usin’ it to double-cross me?”

“Business, my dear man!  Merely business!  I saw my chance, and I took it, that’s all.  Ten thousand a year, and a ten percent interest in a paper mill isn’t so poor—­and I’m not yet thirty.  It takes brains to make money, and you can bet I’ll make my money before my brain begins to slip cogs.  It’s expensive—­this slipping of cogs.”

“Maybe ye’re right,” repeated McNabb.

“I’ll tell the world I’m right!  It won’t be but a few years till I’ll be the big noise around this part of Canada!  Brains to figure out a proposition, and nerve to carry it through—­that’s all it takes to make this old world pay up what it owes you.”