y.

"You're a judge, Elas, my boy," he exclaimed, with clumsy geniality.
"Oh, yes. But you are a young man. There is power in that young woman's
eyes." He laughed again. "Oh, no, I think of the young woman. It not her
capability is. See you look to your place in Skandinavia. Let her go.
She may not buy this Sachigo as I think to buy it. She will buy the men
we would drive from our path."

CHAPTER VI

THE LONELY FIGURE

The girl was leaning against the storm-ripped bole of a fallen tree. The
great figure of her companion was silhouetted against the brilliant
sky-line. He was contemplating the distance at the brink of a sheer-cut
ravine, which dropped away at his feet to giddying depths.

Nancy gazed out beyond him. For the moment he held no interest for her.
She only had eyes for the splendid picture of Nature. They were on high
ground, a great shoulder lifted them clear above their surroundings. Far
as the eye could see was a lustreless green world of unbroken forest. It
seemed to have neither beginning nor end. To the girl's imagination
there could be no break in it until the eternal snows of the Arctic were
reached.

The breadth of it all was a little overwhelming. Nancy was gazing upon
just one portion of the Skandinavia's untouched forest limits, and
somehow it left her with a feeling of protest.

She pointed with one gauntleted hand, stirred to an impulse she could
not deny.

"It's too beautiful," she said. "It isn't fair: it's not right. To think
it's all ours, and we have the right to destroy it."

The man turned. He gazed back at this unusual vision of a beautiful,
well-gowned woman in the heart of the forests. He grinned ironically,
this great, rough-bearded creature, in hard cord clothing, and with his
well-worn fur cap pressed low over his lank hair that reached well-nigh
to his shoulders.

"Why not?" he demanded roughly. "Oh, yes. It's Skandinavia's, every mile
of it. An' I guess there's hundreds an' hundreds of 'em. Ain't that what
Canada's forests are for? To feed us the stuff we're needin'? But you
don't need to worry any. We ain't cuttin' that stuff for years. Guess
the waterways out there are mostly a mean outfit that wouldn't raft a
bunch of lucifers. We need to wait permanent railroad for haulage."

Nancy accepted the statement without reply. It was impossible to stir a
man like Arden Laval to any sort of sympathy. He was hardened, crude,
first, last and all the time. He was big