people who are dependent on me for their bread and butter. When they
plan a marriage or the building of a home or the purchase of a
cottage organ, they have to figure me in on the proposition. I didn't
have a name for the part I played in these people's lives until the
other night when I was helping you with your algebra. I'm the unknown
quantity."

"Oh, no," Bryce protested. "You're the known quantity."

Cardigan smiled. "Well, maybe I am," he admitted. "I've always tried
to be. And if I have succeeded, then you're the unknown quantity,
Bryce, because some day you'll have to take my place; they will have
to depend upon you when I am gone. Listen to me, son. You're only a
boy, and you can't understand everything I tell you now, but I want
you to remember what I tell you, and some day understanding will come
to you. You mustn't fail the people who work for you--who are
dependent upon your strength and brains and enterprises to furnish
them with an opportunity for life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness. When you are the boss of Cardigan's mill, you must keep
the wheels turning; you must never shut down the mill or the logging-
camps in dull times just to avoid a loss you can stand better than
your employees."

His hard, trembling old hand closed over the boy's. "I want you to be
a brave and honourable man," he concluded.

True to his word, when John Cardigan finished his logging in his old,
original holdings adjacent to Sequoia and Bill Henderson's Squaw
Creek timber, he quietly moved south with his Squaw Creek woods-gang
and joined the crew already getting out logs in the San Hedrin