"Best read it," he said. "Take your time. I'll just finish these figures I'm working on."
It was the curious, cold tone that stirred Bat to his first misgiving.
He took the letter. There were pages of it. He set them in order and commenced to read. And meanwhile Standing remained apparently engrossed in his figures.
He read the letter through. He read it slowly, carefully. Then, like the other had done, the man to whom it was addressed, he read it a second time. And as he read every vestige of his previous satisfaction passed from him. A cold constriction seemed to fasten upon his strong heart. And a terrible realisation of the tragedy of it all took possession of him. At the end of his second reading he handed the letter back to its owner without comment of any sort, without a word, but with a hand that, for once in his life, was unsteady.
"That was in the mail Idepski brought," Standing said, as he returned the letter to its place, and shut and locked the drawer.
"You remember?" he went on, pointing. "He flung it down there. Just by the door. Yes, it was just there, because I stood against the door, and was only just clear of it."
He paused and his hand remained pointing at the spot where the mail bag had lain. It was as if the spot held him fascinated. Then his arm lowered slowly, and his hand came to rest on the edge of the table, gripping it with unnecessary force.
"Seems queer," he went on, after a while. Then he shook his head. "Think of it. Nancy—my Nancy. Dead! She died giving birth to my boy. And he—he was stillborn. Why? I—I can't seem to realize it. I—don't—" He paused, and a strained, hunted look grew in his eyes. "No. It's easy. It's just Fate. That's it. There's no escape."
He drew a deep breath and one lean hand smoothed back his shining black hair. Then his eyes came back to the face of the man opposite, and the agony in them was beyond words. After a moment their terrible expression became lost as he bent over his work. "I'm glad you're back, Bat," he said, without looking up.
"There's a hell of a lot of orders to get out. We're running close up to winter."
The lumberman understood. At a single blow this man's every hope had been smashed and ground under the heel of an iron fate. The wife, the woman he had worshipped, had given her life to serve him, and with her had gone the man-child, about whom had been woven the entire network of a father's hopes and desires.
A week had passed since Bat had witnessed the voiceless agony of his friend. A week of endless labour and unspoken fears. He knew Standing as it is given to few to know the heart of another. His sympathy was real. It was of that quality which made him desire above all things to render the heartbroken man real physical and moral help. But no opening had been given him, and he feared to probe the wound that had been inflicted. During those first seven days Standing seemed to be obsessed with a desire to work, to work all day and every night, as though he dared not pause lest his disaster should overwhelm him.
Now it was Sunday. Night and day the work had gone on. No less than ten freighters had been loaded and dispatched since Bat's return, and only that morning two vessels had cast off, laden to the water-line, and passed down on the tide for the mouth of the cove. At the finish of the midday meal Standing had announced his intentions for the afternoon.
"We need to get a look into the lumber on the north side, Bat," he said. "You'd best come along with me. How do you think?"
And Bat had agreed on the instant.
"Sure," he said. "There's a heap to be done that way if we're to start layin' the penstocks down on that side next year."
So they had spent the hours before dusk in a prolonged tramp through the forests of the Northern shore. And never for one moment was their talk and apparent interest allowed to drift from the wealth of long-fibred timber they were inspecting.
But somehow to Bat the whole thing was unreal. It meant nothing. It could mean nothing. He felt like a man walking towards a precipice he could not avoid. He felt disaster, added disaster, was in the air and was closing in upon them. He knew in his heart that this long, weary inspection, all the stuff they talked, all the future plans they were making for the mill was the merest excuse. And he wondered when Standing would abandon it and reveal his actual purpose. The man, he knew, was consumed by a voiceless grief. His soul was tortured beyond endurance. And there was that "yellow streak," which Bat so feared. When, when would it reveal itself? How?
Now, at last, as they rested on the ledge overlooking the mill and the waters of the cove, he felt the moment of its revelation had arrived. He was propped against the stump of a storm-thrown tamarack. Standing was stretched prone upon the fallen trunk itself. Neither had spoken for some minutes. But the trend of thought was apparent in each. Bat's deep-set, troubled eyes were regarding the life and movement going on down at the mill, whose future was the greatest concern of his life. Standing, too, was gazing out over the waters. But his darkly brooding eyes were on the splendid house he had set up on the opposite hillside. It was the home about which his every earthly hope had centred. And even now, in his despair, it remained a magnet for his hopeless gaze.
Winter was already in the bite of the air and in the absence of the legions of flies and mosquitoes as well as in the chilly grey of the lapping waters below them. It was doubtless, too, searching the heart of these men whose faces gave no indication of the sunlight of summer shining within.
"Bat!"
The lumberman turned sharply. He spat out a stream of tobacco juice and waited.
"Bat, old friend, it's no use." Standing had swung himself into a sitting posture. He was leaning forward on the tree-trunk with his forearms folded across his knees. "We've done a lot of talk, and we've searched these forests good. And it's all no use. None at all. There's going to be no penstocks set up this side of the water next year—as far as I'm concerned. I've done. Finished. Plumb finished. I'm quitting. Quitting it all."
The lumberman ejected a masticated chew and took a fresh one.
"You see, old friend, I'll go crazy if I stop around," Standing went on. "I've been hit a pretty desperate punch, and I haven't the guts to stand up to it. When it came I set my teeth. I wanted to keep sane. I reminded myself of all I owed to the folks working for us. I thought of you. And I tried to bolster myself with the schemes we had for beating the Skandinavians out of this country's pulp-wood trade. Yes, I tried. God, how I tried! But my guts are weak, and I know what lies ahead. For nearly six weeks I've been working things out, and for a week I've been wondering how I should tell you. I brought you here to tell you.
"I want you to understand it good," he went on, after the briefest pause. "I can't stand to live on in the house that Nancy and I built up. Every room is haunted by her. By her happy laugh, and by memories of the hours we sat and talked of the boy-child we'd both set our hearts on. I just can't do it without going stark, staring, raving mad. I can't."
"That's how I figgered. I've watched it in you, Les. Tell me the rest."
Bat chewed steadily. It was a safety-valve for his feelings.
"The rest?" Standing turned to gaze out at the house across the water. "If it weren't for you, Bat, I'd close right down. I'd leave everything standing and—get out," he went on slowly. "The whole thing's a nightmare. Look at it. Look around. The forests of soft wood. The township we've set up. The harnessed water power. That—that house of mine. It's all nightmare, and I don't want it. I'm afraid. I'm scared to death of it."
Bat moved away from the stump he had been propped against. He passed across to the edge of the ledge and stood gazing down on the scenes below.
"You needn't worry for me," he said. "It don't matter a cuss where or how I hustle my dry hash. I was born that way. Fix things the way you feel. Cut me right out."
The man's generosity