e're putting in steam engines and boilers, but we're going to
depend mostly on water power."

"Goin' to build a dam, eh? Big dam?"

"Yes."

"Um!... Stock company?"

"Yes. We'll be solid. Capitalized for a quarter of a million and bonded
for a quarter of a million. Gives us half a million capital to start
business."

"Stock all sold?"

"Every share."

"Who to?"

"Mostly in small blocks in Boston."

"Um!... Bonds sold?"

"Yes."

"Who bought 'em?"

"They're underwritten by the Commonwealth Security Trust Company."

"Want to know!... Got authority? Vested with authority to put it in
writin'?"

"The contract, you mean?"

"Calculate to mean that."

"Yes."

"Lawyer acrost the street," said Scattergood.

"You can swing it?"

"Calculate to."

"You have the capital to make good?"

"Know I have, don't you? Wouldn't have come to me if you hadn't?"

"You'll have to borrow heavily."

"My lookout, hain't it? Don't need to worry you?"

"Not in the least."

"Lawyer's still acrost the street."

So Scattergood and Mr. Blossom went across the street and up the narrow
stairs to Lawyer Norton's office, where a contract was drafted and
signed, obligating Scattergood to deliver to the Higgins's Bridge Pulp
Company twenty-five thousand cords of pulp, on or before May 1st,
payment to be made on delivery. Mr. Blossom went away wearing a
satisfied expression, and in the course of the day sent to Crane & Keith
a brief message, a message of two words. "He bit," was the telegram.

Scattergood went back to his chair, and presently might have been seen
to unlace his shoes absent-mindedly. For an hour he sat there, twiddling
his bare toes. Then he got up, jerked Mr. Blossom's old jackknife from
the post where it had been abandoned, and pocketed it.

"If nothin' else happens," he said to himself, "I'm figgered to make a
profit of sixty cents and a tradin' knife."

There followed a very busy fall and winter for Scattergood. Not that he
neglected his hardware store, but from its porch, and later from a post
beside its big stove, he recruited men for his camps and directed the
labor of cutting and piling pulpwood along the banks of Coldriver.
Also, from time to time, he visited various banks to borrow the money
necessary to carry on the operation, sometimes on notes and collateral,
sometimes on timber mortgages. The sum of his borrowing mounted and
mounted, until, before the arrival of spring, his credit had been
s