read and butter may become. He had always been accustomed to money.
Consequently he had very few illusions either about money as such or
the various methods of acquiring money. He had undergone too rigorous
a business training for that. He knew how easy it was to make money
with money--and how difficult, how very nearly impossible it was for
the penniless man to secure more than a living by his utmost exertion.
If this timber holding should turn out to be worthless, if it _should_
prove unsalable at any price, it would be a question of a job for him,
before so very long. With the handicap of his face! With that
universal inclination of people to avoid him because they disliked to
look on the direct result of settling international difficulties with
bayonets and high explosives and poison gas, he would not fare very
well in the search for a decent job. Poverty had never seemed to
present quite such a sinister face as it did to Hollister when he
reached this point in his self-communings.

Mr. Lewis received him with a total lack of the bland dignity
Hollister remembered. The man seemed uneasy, distracted. His eyes had
a furtive look in them. Hollister, however, had not come there to make
a study of Mr. Lewis' physiognomy or manner.

"I went up to Toba Inlet awhile ago and had a look over that timber
limit of mine," he began abruptly. "I'd like to see the documents
bearing on that, if you don't mind."

Mr. Lewis looked at him uncertainly, but he called a clerk and issued
an order. While the clerk was on his mission to the files Lewis put a
few questions which Hollister answered without disclosing what he had
in mind. It struck him, though, that the tone of Mr. Lewis' inquiry
bordered upon the anxious.

Presently the clerk returned with the papers. Hollister took them up.
He selected the agreement of sale, a letter or two, the original
cruiser's estimate, a series of tax receipts, held them in his hand
and looked at Lewis.

"You haven't succeeded in finding a buyer, I suppose?"

"In the winter," Lewis replied, "there is very little stir in timber."

"There is going to be some sort of stir in this timber before long,"
Hollister said.

The worried expression deepened on Mr. Lewis' face.

"The fact is," Hollister continued evenly, "I made a rough survey of
that timber, and found it away off color. You represented it to
contain so many million feet. It doesn't. Nowhere near. I appear to
have been rather badly stung,