of the
sheets to give him the whole story. Incompetence and worse, sheer
carelessness looked up at him from every sheet. The planing mill was in
a state of chaotic disorganization.

"What does this mean, Mr. Wickes?" he burst forth, putting his finger
upon an item that cried out mismanagement and blundering. "Here is an
order that takes a month to clear which should be done within ten days
at the longest."

Wickes stood silent, overwhelmed in dismayed self-condemnation.

"It seems difficult somehow to get orders through, sir, these days," he
said after a pause.

"Difficult? What is the difficulty? The men are there, the machines are
there, the material is in the yard. Why the delay? And look at this.
Here is a lot of material gone to the scrap heap, the finest spruce ever
grown in Canada too. What does this mean, Wickes?" he seemed to welcome
the opportunity of finding a scapegoat for economic crimes, for which he
could find no pardon.

Sheet after sheet passed in swift review under his eye. Suddenly he
flung himself back in his chair.

"Wickes, this is simply damnable!"

"Yes, sir," said Wickes, his face pale and his fingers trembling. "I
don't--I don't seem to be able to--to--get things through."

"Get things through? I should say not," shouted Maitland, glaring at
him.

"I have tried, I mean I'm afraid I'm--that I am not quite up to it, as I
used to be. I get confused--and--" The old bookkeeper's lips were white
and quivering. He could not get on with his story.

"Here, take these away," roared Maitland.

Gathering up the sheets with fingers that trembled helplessly,
Wickes crept hurriedly out through the door, leaving a man behind
him furiously, helplessly struggling in the relentless grip of his
conscience, lashed with a sense of his own injustice. His anger which
had found vent upon his old bookkeeper he knew was due another man, a
man with whom at any cost he could never allow himself to be angry. The
next two hours were bad hours for Grant Maitland.

As the quitting whistle blew a tap came again to the office door. It was
Wickes, with a paper in his hand. Without a word he laid the paper upon
his chief's desk and turned away. Maitland glanced over it rapidly.

"Wickes, what does this nonsense mean?" His chief's voice arrested him.
He turned again to the desk.

"I don't think--I have come to feel, sir, that I am not able for my
job. I do not see as how I can go on." Maitland's brows frowned upon