--a very little.

"I got behind; that's all there is to it," he said. "I s'pose I ought
to have driven the men a little; but still, I don't know. It gets pretty
cold on the plains. I guess I bit off more than I could chew."

His eye followed listlessly a frenzied squirrel swinging from the tops
of poplars.

"I wouldn't 'a done it for myself," he went on. "I don't like the
confounded responsibility. They's too much worry connected with it all.
I had a good snug little stake--mighty nigh six thousand. She's all gone
now. That'd have been enough for me--I ain't a drinkin' man. But then
there was the woman and the kid. This ain't no country for woman-folks,
and I wanted t' take little Lida out o' here. I had lots of experience
in the woods, and I've seen men make big money time and again, who
didn't know as much about it as I do. But they got there, somehow. Says
I, I'll make a stake this year--I'd a had twelve thousand in th' bank,
if things'd have gone right--and then we'll jest move down around
Detroit an' I'll put Lida in school."

Thorpe noticed a break in the man's voice, and glancing suddenly
toward him was astounded to catch his eyes brimming with tears. Radway
perceived the surprise.

"You know when I left Christmas?" he asked.

"Yes."

"I was gone two weeks, and them two weeks done me. We was going slow
enough before, God knows, but even with the rank weather and all, I
think we'd have won out, if we could have held the same gait."

Radway paused. Thorpe was silent.

"The boys thought it was a mighty poor rig, my leaving that way."

He paused again in evident expectation of a reply. Again Thorpe was
silent.

"Didn't they?" Radway insisted.

"Yes, they did," answered Thorpe.

The older man sighed. "I thought so," he went on. "Well, I didn't go to
spend Christmas. I went because Jimmy brought me a telegram that Lida
was sick with diphtheria. I sat up nights with her for 'leven days."

"No bad after-effects, I hope?" inquired Thorpe.

"She died," said Radway simply.

The two men tramped stolidly on. This was too great an affair for Thorpe
to approach except on the knees of his spirit. After a long interval,
during which the waters had time to still, the young man changed the
subject.

"Aren't you going to get anything out of M. & D.?" he asked.

"No. Didn't earn nothing. I left a lot of their saw logs hung up in the
woods, where they'll deteriorate from rot and worms. This is their last
season