as if
she'd bin doin' some fancy work on it."

Brice glanced quickly at Mr. Tarbox's face. It was stolid and
imperturbable. She had evidently kept the secret of what passed in
the hollow to herself. For the first time he looked around the room
curiously. "I didn't know you were a land agent before," he said.

"No more I was! All that kem out o' that paragraph, Mr. Brice. That man
Heckshill, who was so mighty perlite that night, wrote to me afterwards
that he didn't know my name till he'd seed that paragraph, and he wanted
to know ef, ez a 'well-known citizen,' I could recommend him some timber
lands. I recommended him half o' my own quarter section, and he took it.
He's puttin' up a mill thar, and that's another reason why we want peace
and quietness up thar. I'm tryin' (betwixt and between us, Mr. Brice) to
get Harry to cl'ar out and sell his rights in the valley and the water
power on the Fork to Heckshill and me. I'm opening a business here."

"Then you've left Mrs. Tarbox with Miss Flora in your cabin while you
attend to business here," said Brice tentatively.

"Not exactly, Mr. Brice. The old woman thought it a good chance to come
to 'Frisco and put Flo in one o' them Catholic convent schools--that
asks no questions whar the raw logs come from, and turns 'em out
first-class plank all round. You foller me, Mr. Brice? But Mrs. Tarbox
is jest in the next room, and would admire to tell ye all this--and I'll
go in and send her to you." And with a patronizing wave of the hand, Mr.
Tarbox complacently disappeared in the hall.

Mr. Brice was not sorry to be left to himself in his utter bewilderment!
Flo, separated from her detrimental uncle, and placed in a convent
school! Tarbox, the obscure pioneer, a shrewd speculator emerging into
success, and taking the uncle's place! And all this within that month
which he had wasted with absurd repinings. How feeble seemed his own
adventure and advancement; how even ludicrous his pretensions to any
patronage and superiority. How this common backwoodsman had set him in
his place as easily as SHE had evaded the advances of the journalist and
Heckshill! They had taught him a lesson; perhaps even the sending back
of his handkerchief was part of it! His heart grew heavy; he walked to
the window and gazed out with a long sigh.

A light laugh, that might have been an echo of the one which had
attracted him that night in Tarbox's cabin, fell upon his ear. He turned
quickly to meet Flo