notes given by Newmark and Orde would come due by the beginning of
the following summer. Before that time Orde must be able to meet them
personally, or, as by the agreement with Newmark, his stock in the Boom
Company would be turned in to the firm. This would, of course, spell
nearly a total loss of it, as far as Orde was concerned.

The chief anxiety under which the riverman laboured, however, was
the imminent prospect of losing under the mortgage all the Northern
Peninsula timber. He had thought that the firm would be able to step in
for its redemption, even if he personally found himself unable to
meet the obligation. Three hundred million feet would seem to be too
important a matter to let go under so small a mortgage. Now as the time
approached, he realised that if he could not pay the notes, the firm
would certainly be unable to do so. What with the second mortgage,
due two years later, and to be met by Newmark; with the outstanding
obligations; with the new enterprise of the vessels ordered from Duncan
McLeod, Newmark and Orde would be unable to raise anything like the
necessary amount. To his personal anxieties Orde added a deep and bitter
self-reproach at having involved his partner in what amounted to a total
loss.

Spurred doubly by these considerations, then, he fell upon the woods
work with unparalleled ferocity. A cut and sale of the forty million
feet remaining of the firm's up-river holdings, together with the tolls
to be collected for driving the river that spring would, if everything
went right and no change in the situation took place, bring Orde through
the venture almost literally by "the skin of his teeth." To cut forty
million feet, even in these latter days of improvements then unknown,
would be a task to strain to the utmost every resource of energy,
pluck, equipment and organisation. In 1880-81 the operators on the river
laughed good-humouredly over an evident madness.

Nevertheless Orde accomplished the task. To be sure he was largely
helped by a favourable winter. The cold weather came early and continued
late. Freezing preceded the snow, which was deep enough for good
travoying and to assure abundant freshet water in the spring, but not
too deep to interfere with the work. Orde increased his woods force;
and, contrary to his custom, he drove them mercilessly. He was that
winter his own walking-boss, and lived constantly in the woods. The
Rough Red had charge of the banking, where his aggr