old Michigan ever turned out. He walked logs before I was born."

"Glad to know you, Mr. Orde," said Tally, quite unmoved.




V


The two left Bob to his own devices. The old riverman and the
astonishingly thawed and rejuvenated Mr. Fox disappeared in the private
office. Bob proffered a question to the busy Collins, discovered himself
free until afternoon, and so went out through the office and into the
clear open air.

He headed at once across the wide sawdust area toward the mill and the
lake. A great curiosity, a great interest filled him. After a moment he
found himself walking between tall, leaning stacks of lumber, piled
crosswise in such a manner that the sweet currents of air eddied through
the interstices between the boards and in the narrow, alley-like spaces
between the square and separate stacks. A coolness filled these streets,
a coolness born of the shade in which they were cast, the freshness of
still unmelted snow lying in patches, the quality of pine with its faint
aromatic pitch smell and its suggestion of the forest. Bob wandered on
slowly, his hands in his pockets. For the time being his more active
interest was in abeyance, lulled by the subtle, elusive phantom of
grandeur suggested in the aloofness of this narrow street fronted by its
square, skeleton, windowless houses through which the wind rattled.
After a little he glimpsed blue through the alleys between. Then a side