e district that obliterated the
piles of letters and telegrams. Baudette's eyes brightened. He loved
maps, but never before had he seen one so minute and comprehensive.

"That's compiled from all available surveys and records. It took three
months to make it. I was getting ready for you."

Baudette nodded. He was interested in how the thing was compiled, and
his eyes traced the birth and flow of rivers and the great sweep of
well remembered lakes. Presently Clark's voice came in again.

"Where's the best pulp wood? We've been getting it from everywhere."

A lean brown forefinger slid slowly over the edge of the map. Clark
noted its delicacy and strength. It halted a moment at St. Marys,
then, as though Baudette counted the miles, traversed the shore of
Superior and turned into a great bay to the westward. At the belly of
the bay the finger struck inland following a wide river, and halted in
a triangle of land where the river forked. Baudette looked up and
nodded.

"Ah!" said Clark thoughtfully. "How much good wood is there?"

The forefinger commenced an irregular course during which it struck
into salients that followed up lesser and tributary streams. It had
enclosed perhaps five hundred square miles of Canadian territory when
it reached its starting point.

"Four years' wood." Baudette's voice was still impressive.

The other man smiled as though in subdued mirth, and with a red pencil
outlined the area. Following this his eyes rested contemplatively on
the lumberman who sat still focussed on the map.

"Come back in two weeks," he said suddenly. "Good morning."

Baudette glanced at him, and went out so quietly that there was not the
sound of a footstep. Clark's manner of speech and person had set him
thinking as never before. Ten thousand cords of wood a year was the
usual order of things, but of fifty thousand cords he had never dreamed.

He had a new set of sensations which filled him with a novel confidence
in his own powers. He was reacting, like all the others, to the
intimate touch of a communicative confidence. He passed thoughtfully
through the general office, noting as he closed the door that on a
bench near Clark's door sat Fisette, a French halfbreed whom he knew.
He remarked also that Fisette's pockets were bulging, it seemed, with
rocks.

A moment later Fisette was summoned. He went in, treading lightly on
the balls of his feet, and leaning forward as though under a load