into this yet, but
I'm doing so."

"That sounds very promising," Hilliard answered. "I don't know much
about it, but I believe soft wood blocks are considered better than
hard."

"They wear more evenly, I understand. I'm trying to persuade the Paris
authorities to try a piece of it, and if that does well it might develop
into a big thing. Indeed, I can imagine our giving up the pit-props
altogether in the future."

After a time Miss Coburn joined them, and, the Ford car being brought
out, the party set off on their excursion. They visited a part of
the wood where the trees were larger than near the sawmill, and had a
pleasant though uneventful afternoon. The evening they spent as before
at the Coburns' house.

Next day the friends invited their hosts to join them in a trip up
the river. Hilliard tactfully interested the manager in the various
"gadgets" he had fitted up in the launch, and Merriman's dream of
making tea with Miss Coburn materialized. The more he saw of the gentle,
brown-eyed girl, the more he found his heart going out to her, and
the more it was borne in on him that life without her was becoming a
prospect more terrible than he could bring himself to contemplate.

They went up-stream on the flood tide for some twenty miles, until the
forest thinned away and they came on vineyards. There they went ashore,
and it was not until the shades of evening were beginning to fall that
they arrived back at the clearing.

As they swung round the bend in sight of the wharf Mr. Coburn made an
exclamation.

"Hallo!" he cried. "There's the Girondin. She has made a good run. We
weren't expecting her for another three or four hours."

At the wharf lay a vessel of about 300 tons burden, with bluff, rounded
bows sitting high up out of the water, a long, straight waist, and a
bridge and cluster of deckhouses at the stern.

"Our motor ship," Mr. Coburn explained with evident pride. "We had her
specially designed for carrying the pit-props, and also for this river.
She only draws eight feet. You must come on board and have a look over
her."

This was of all things what Hilliard most desired. He recognized that if
he was allowed to inspect her really thoroughly, it would finally dispel
any lingering suspicion he might still harbor that the syndicate was
engaged in smuggling operations. The two points on which that suspicion
had been founded--the absence of return cargoes and the locality of the
French end of the en