“Ah, he’s a man.  He is indeed,” old John Cardigan murmured proudly.  “I dare say you’ll never get to know him intimately, but if you should—­”

“I know him intimately,” she corrected him.  “He saved my life the day the log-train ran away.  And that was another reason.  I owed him a debt, and so did my uncle; but Uncle wouldn’t pay his share, and I had to pay for him.”

“Wonderful,” murmured John Cardigan, “wonderful!  But still you haven’t told me why you paid a hundred thousand dollars for the Giants when you could have bought them for fifty thousand.  You had a woman’s reason, I dare say, and women always reason from the heart, never the head.  However, if you do not care to tell me, I shall not insist.  Perhaps I have appeared, unduly inquisitive.”

“I would rather not tell you,” she answered.

A gentle, prescient smile fringed his old mouth; he wagged his leonine head as if to say:  “Why should I ask, when I know?” Fell again a restful silence.  Then: 

“Am I allowed one guess, Miss Shirley Sumner?”

“Yes, but you would never guess the reason.”

“I am a very wise old man.  When one sits in the dark, one sees much that was hidden from him in the full glare of the light.  My son is proud, manly, independent, and the soul of honour.  He needed a hundred thousand dollars; you knew it.  Probably your uncle informed you.  You wanted to loan him some money, but—­you couldn’t.  You feared to offend him by proffering it; had you proffered it, he would have declined it.  So you bought my Valley of the Giants at a preposterous price and kept your action a secret.”  And he patted her hand gently, as if to silence any denial, while far down the skid-road a voice—­a half-trained baritone—­floated faintly to them through the forest.  Somebody was singing—­or rather chanting—­a singularly tuneless refrain, wild and barbaric.

“What is that?” Shirley cried.

“That is my son, coming to fetch his old daddy home,” replied John Cardigan.  “That thing he’s howling is an Indian war-song or paean of triumph—­something his nurse taught him when he wore pinafores.  If you’ll excuse me, Miss Shirley Sumner, I’ll leave you now.  I generally contrive to meet him on the trail.”

He bade her good-bye and started down the trail, his stick tapping against the old logging-cable stretched from tree to tree beside the trail and marking it.

Shirley was tremendously relieved.  She did not wish to meet Bryce Cardigan to-day, and she was distinctly grateful to John Cardigan for his nice consideration in sparing her an interview.  She seated herself in the lumberjack’s easy-chair so lately vacated, and chin in hand gave herself up to meditation on this extraordinary old man and his extraordinary son.

A couple of hundred yards down the trail Bryce met his father.  “Hello, John Cardigan!” he called.  “What do you mean by skallyhooting through these woods without a pilot?  Eh?  Explain your reckless conduct.”