him, anyway, because even then, when he
wasn't quite twenty, he was a woman hunter, preying on silly girls. I
don't know what his magic with women is, but it works, until they find
him out. He was playing off two or three fool girls that I knew and at
the same time keeping a woman in apartments down-town,--a girl he'd
picked up on a trip to Georgia,--like any confirmed rounder.

"Well, from that time on, he hated me, always laid for a chance to sting
me. We went to Princeton the same year. We collided there, so hard that
when word of it got to my father's ears, he called me home and read the
riot act so strong that I flared up and left. Then I came to the coast
here and got a job in the woods, got to be a logging boss, and went into
business on my own hook eventually. I'd just got nicely started when I
ran into Monohan again. He'd got into timber himself. I was hand logging
up the coast, and I'd hate to tell you the tricks he tried. He kept it
up until I got too big to be harassed in a petty way. Then he left me
alone. But he never forgot his grudge. The stage was all set for this
act long before you gave him his cue, Stella. You weren't to blame for
that, or if you were in part, it doesn't matter now. I'm satisfied.
Paradoxically I feel rich, even though it's a long shot that I'm broke
flat. I've got something money doesn't buy. And he has overreached
himself at last. All his money and pull won't help him out of this jack
pot. Arson and attempted murder is serious business."

"They caught him," Stella said. "The constables took him down the lake
to-night. I saw him on their launch as they passed the _Waterbug_."

"Yes?" Fyfe said. "Quick work. I didn't even know about the shooting
till I came in here to-night about dark. Well," he snapped his fingers,
"exit Monohan. He's a dead issue, far as we're concerned. Wouldn't you
like something to eat, Stella? I'm hungry, and I was dog-tired when I
landed here. Say, you can't guess what I was thinking about, lady,
standing there when you came in."

She shook her head.

"I had a crazy notion of touching a match to the house," he said
soberly, "letting it go up in smoke with the rest. Yes, that's what I
was thinking I would do. Then I'd take the _Panther_ and what gear I
have on the scows and pull off Roaring Lake. It didn't seem as if I
could stay. I'd laid the foundation of a fortune here and tried to make
a home--and lost it all, everything that was worth having. And then