sked for. If you can't do it, we shall
have to get a man who can."

"But I had--" began the man once more.

"I ask every man to succeed in what I give him to do," interrupted
Thorpe. "If he has a headache, he must brace up or quit. If his Babbit
doesn't act just right he must doctor it up; or get some more, even if
he has to steal it. If he has hard luck, he must sit up nights to better
it. It's none of my concern how hard or how easy a time a man has in
doing what I tell him to. I EXPECT HIM TO DO IT. If I have to do all a
man's thinking for him, I may as well hire Swedes and be done with it.
I have too many details to attend to already without bothering about
excuses."

The man stood puzzling over this logic.

"I ain't got any other job," he ventured.

"You can go to piling on the docks," replied Thorpe, "if you want to."

Thorpe was thus explicit because he rather liked Herrick. It was hard
for him to discharge the man peremptorily, and he proved the need of
justifying himself in his own eyes.

Now he sat back idly in the clean painted little room with the big
square desk and the three chairs. Through the door he could see Collins,
perched on a high stool before the shelf-like desk. From the open window
came the clear, musical note of the circular saw, the fresh aromatic
smell of new lumber, the bracing air from Superior sparkling in the
offing. He felt tired. In rare moments such as these, when the muscles
of his striving relaxed, his mind turned to the past. Old sorrows rose
before him and looked at him with their sad eyes; the sorrows that had
helped to make him what he was. He wondered where his sister was. She
would be twenty-two years old now. A tenderness, haunting, tearful,
invaded his heart. He suffered. At such moments the hard shell of his
rough woods life seemed to rend apart. He longed with a great longing
for sympathy, for love, for the softer influences that cradle even
warriors between the clangors of the battles.

The outer door, beyond the cage behind which Collins and his shelf
desk were placed, flew open. Thorpe heard a brief greeting, and Wallace
Carpenter stood before him.

"Why, Wallace, I didn't know you were coming!" began Thorpe, and
stopped. The boy, usually so fresh and happily buoyant, looked ten years
older. Wrinkles had gathered between his eyes. "Why, what's the matter?"
cried Thorpe.

He rose swiftly and shut the door into the outer office. Wallace seated
himself mechanic