old Squire was to be away from home. Asa Doane had
left us, too, for a visit to his folks. As it chanced, however, a
strenuous emergency arose.

A year previously the old Squire had made an agreement with a New York
factory, to furnish dowels and strips of clear white birch wood, for
piano keys and _passementerie_.

At that time _passementerie_ was coming into use for ladies' dresses.
The fine white-birch dowels were first turned round on small lathes and
afterwards into little bugle and bottle-shaped ornaments, then dyed a
glistening black and strung on linen threads.

On our own forest lots we had no birch which quite met the requirements.
But another lumberman, an acquaintance of the old Squire's, named John
Lurvey (a brother of old Zachary Lurvey), who owned lots north of ours,
had just what we needed to fill the order.

Lumbermen are often "neighborly" with each other in such matters, and
with John Lurvey the old Squire made a kind of running contract for
three hundred cords of white-birch "bolts" from a lakeside lot. Each one
made a memorandum of the agreement in his pocket note-book; and as each
trusted the other, nothing more exact or formal was thought necessary.

The white birch was known to be valuable lumber. We were to pay two
thousand dollars for it on the stump,--one thousand down,--and have two
"winters" in which to get it off and pay the balance of the money. And
here it may be said that in the Maine woods a winter is supposed to mean
the snowy season from November till April.

Meanwhile other ventures were pressing. In company with a Canadian
partner, the old Squire was then getting spruce lumber down the St.
Maurice River at Three Rivers, in the Province of Quebec. This New York
birch contract was deferred a year, the plan being finally to get off
the birch in March of the second winter, when the crews and teams from
two other lumber-camps could conveniently be sent to the lake, and make
a quick job of it.

But in December of that second winter John Lurvey died suddenly of
pneumonia. His property passed into the hands of his wife, who was by no
means easy-going. She overhauled this note-book agreement, took legal
advice of a sharp lawyer, and on February 21st sent us legal
notification that the agreement would expire on February 28th, the last
day of winter, according to the calendar. The notification also demanded
payment of the second thousand dollars. Her scheme, of course, was to
get the m