"They're smart people across the frontier, but to send a man into the
northern timber belt looking for paint trade openings or resin they can
make varnish of is about the limit to commercial enterprise."

Harding was leaning back in his chair in the smoking-room with a frown
on his face when Blake joined him. He had a nervous, alert look, and
was dressed with fastidious neatness.

"So you have come along at last!" he remarked in an ironical tone.
"Feel like getting down to business, or shall we put it off again?"

"Sorry I couldn't come earlier," Blake replied. "Somehow or other I
couldn't get away. Things kept turning up to occupy me."

"It's a way they seem to have. Your trouble is that you're too
diffuse; you spread yourself out too much. You want to fix your mind
on one thing; and that will have to be business as soon as we leave
here."

"I dare say you're right. My interest's apt to wander; but if you take
advantage of every opportunity that offers, you get most out of life.
Concentration's good; but if you concentrate on a thing and then don't
get it, you begin to think what a lot of other things you've missed."

"That may be all right," said Harding dubiously; "but we're going to
concentrate on business right now. I have a wife, and I don't forget
it. Marianna--that's Mrs. Harding--is living in a two-room tenement,
making her own dresses and cooking on a gasoline stove, so's to give me
my chance for finding the gum. And I'm here in an expensive hotel,