the necessity to adapt himself, even if stiffly, to unfamiliar
conditions. This big log house itself, it seemed to King, was carried on
the back of old Ben.

They had been friends together since King could remember, since Ben had
big-brothered him, carried him on his back, taught him to swim and
shoot. Then one year while King was off at school his friend took unto
himself a wife. This with no permission from Mark King; not even after a
conference with him; in fact, to his utter bewilderment. King did not so
much as know of the event until Gaynor, after a month of honeymooning,
remembered to drop him a brief note. The bald fact jarred; King was hurt
and grew angry and resentful with all of that unreason of a boy. He went
off to Alaska without a word to Gaynor.

With the passage of time the friends had again grown intimate, had been
partners in more than one deal, and the youthful relationship had been
cemented by the years. But it had happened, seemingly purely through
chance, although King knew better, that he had never met Gaynor's wife
or daughter. When Gloria was little, Mrs. Gaynor had been impressed by
the desirability of a city environment, had urged the larger schools,
music teachers, proper young companions, and a host of somewhat vague
advantages. Hence a large part of the year Gaynor kept bachelor's
quarters in his own little lumber town in the mountains where his
business interests held him and where his wife and daughter came during
a few weeks in the summer to visit him. At such periods King always
managed to be away. This year the wife and daughter, drawn by the new
summer home, had come early in the season, and King's business was
urgent. Besides, he had told himself a dozen times, there really existed
no sane reason in the world why he should avoid Ben Gaynor's family as
though they were leprous.

... What King said in answer to his friend's approval was by way of a
bantering:

"Miracles do happen! Here's Ben Gaynor playing he's a bird of paradise.
Or emulating Beau Brummel. Which is it, Ben? And whence the fine idea?"

Gaynor, with a strange sort of smile, King thought, half sheepish and
the other half tender, cast a downward glance along the encasement of
the outer man. Silk shirt, a very pure white; bright tie, very new;
white flannels, very spick and span; silken hose and low white ties.
This garb for Ben Gaynor the lumberman, who felt not entirely at his
ease, hence the sheepish grin; a fond