interference from--Nathaniel Hellbeam."

Bat grunted some sort of acquiescence. He was gazing steadily out over
the spruce belt which covered the lower slopes of the hillside. His keen
deep-set eyes were on the shipping lying out in the cove, watching the
fussy approach of the bluff packet boat.

It was a scene of amazing natural splendour which the works of man had
no power to destroy. Farewell Cove was a perfect natural harbour,
deep-set amidst surrounding, lofty, forest-clad hills. It was wide and
deep, a veritable sea-lake, backing inland some fifteen miles behind the
wide headland gateway to the East, which guarded its entrance from the
storming Atlantic. Its shores were of virgin forest, peopled with the
delicate-hued spruce, and all the many other varieties of soft, white,
long-fibred timber demanded in the manufacture of the groundwood pulp
needed for the world's paper industry.

Far as the eye could see, in every direction, it was the same; forest
and hill. And, in the heart of it all, the great watercourse of the
Beaver River debouched upon the cove which linked it with the ocean
beyond. It was a world of forest, seeming of limitless extent.

But the feast that had inspired Leslie Standing's words was less the
banquet which Nature had spread than the things which expressed the
labours he and his companion had expended during the past seven years.
He was concerned for the endless forests. He appreciated the great
waterfall to the west, where the Beaver River fell off the highlands of
the interior and precipitated itself into the cove below. These were the
two things in Nature he had demanded to make his work possible. For the
rest, the rugged immensity of scenery, the mighty contours of the aged