across the country on business.

No man of McLean's gangs could honestly say that he ever had been
overdriven or underpaid. The Boss never had exacted any deference from
his men, yet so intense was his personality that no man of them ever had
attempted a familiarity. They all knew him to be a thorough gentleman,
and that in the great timber city several millions stood to his credit.

He was the only son of that McLean who had sent out the finest ships
ever built in Scotland. That his son should carry on this business after
the father's death had been his ambition. He had sent the boy through
the universities of Oxford and Edinburgh, and allowed him several years'
travel before he should attempt his first commission for the firm.

Then he was ordered to southern Canada and Michigan to purchase a
consignment of tall, straight timber for masts, and south to Indiana for
oak beams. The young man entered these mighty forests, parts of which
lay untouched since the dawn of the morning of time. The clear, cool,
pungent atmosphere was intoxicating. The intense silence, like that of a
great empty cathedral, fascinated him. He gradually learned that, to
the shy wood creatures that darted across his path or peeped inquiringly
from leafy ambush, he was brother. He found himself approaching, with a
feeling of reverence, those majestic trees that had stood through ages
of sun, wind, and snow. Soon it became difficult to fell them. When he
had filled his order and returned home, he was amazed to learn that in
the swamps and forests he had lost his heart and it was calling--forever
calling him.

When he inherited his father's property, he promptly disposed of it,
and, with his mother, founded a home in a splendid residence in the