ringly upon
her.

Nor had she. There was a bloom on the soft contour of her cheek, a
luminous gleam in her wide, gray eyes. All the ill wrought by months of
drudging work and mental revolt had vanished. She was undeniably good to
look at, a woman in full flower, round-bodied, deep-breasted, aglow with
the unquenched fires of youth. She was aware that Jack Fyfe found her so
and tolerably glad that he did so find her. She had revised a good many
of her first groping estimates of him that winter. And when she looked
over the port bow and saw in behind Halfway Point the huddled shacks of
her brother's camp where so much had overtaken her, she experienced a
swift rush of thankfulness that she was--as she was. She slid her gloved
hand impulsively into Jack Fyfe's, and his strong fingers shut down on
hers closely.

They sat silent until the camp lay abeam. About it there was every sign
of activity. A chunky stern-wheeler, with blow-off valve hissing, stood
by a boom of logs in the bay, and men were moving back and forth across
the swifters, making all ready for a tow. Stella marked a new bunkhouse.
Away back on the logging ground in a greater clearing she saw the
separate smoke of two donkey engines. Another, a big roader, Fyfe
explained, puffed at the water's edge. She could see a string of logs
tearing down the skid-road.

"He's going pretty strong, that brother of yours," Fyfe remarked. "If
he holds his gait, he'll be a big timberman before you know it."

"He'll make money, I imagine," Stella admitted, "but I don't know what
good that will do him. He'll only want more. What is there about
money-making that warps some men so, makes them so grossly
self-centered? I'd pity any girl who married Charlie. He used to be
rather wild at home, but I never dreamed any man could change so."

"You use the conventional measuring-stick on him," her husband answered,
with that tolerance which so often surprised her. "Maybe his ways are
pretty crude. But he's feverishly hewing a competence--which is what
we're all after--out of pretty crude material. And he's just a kid,
after all, with a kid's tendency to go to extremes now and then. I kinda
like the beggar's ambition and energy."

"But he hasn't the least consideration for anybody or anything," Stella
protested. "He rides rough-shod over every one. That isn't either right
or decent."

"It's the only way some men can get to the top," Fyfe answered quietly.
"They concentrate on the