"I don't want to have you messing into any such business. There's something about you--something that makes me want to put a safeguard over you, sis, instead of sending you into danger." "You'll make the danger worse for me if you don't give me that permission--a word from you to them that I'm your agent." She arose, flaming with her resolution. "I am going anyway, sir! You can't stop me from going where I will in the woods." "You're right!" he admitted, sadly. "I'm so old and helpless that I can't even boss a girl." She stood in front of him and put Latisan's cap on her head; she pulled on the belted jacket. "They'll know this jacket and cap! I'll tell the story! Do you think it is folly? No! I can see in your face that you know what those men will do!" "Yes, I do know! I have been a woodsman in my time, too! After they have listened to you they'll hammer hell out of anything that gets in front of 'em." His face lighted up. He beamed on her. "I told you that old age has its whims. A minute ago a whim made me want to keep you away from trouble. Now, by the gods! the same whim makes me want to send you north. You will stand for Eck Flagg, saying what he'd like to say to his men! The right spirit is in you! I ain't afraid that you won't make good!" He pointed to an object on the wall of the room. It was a stout staff of ash tipped with a steel nose and provided with a hook of steel; it was the Flagg cant dog. The ash staff was banded with faded red stripes and there was a queer figure carved on the wood. "Lift it down and bring it here and lay it across my knees," he commanded. She ran and brought it. "They know that stick along the Noda waters," he told her, caressing the staff with his hale hand. "I carried it at the head of the drive for many a year, my girl. You won't need letters of introduction if you go north with that stick in your hand. I would never give it into the hands of a man. It has propped the edge of my shelter tent, to keep the spring snow off my face when I caught a few winks of sleep; that steel dog has rattled nigh my ear when I couldn't afford to sleep and kept walking. Tell 'em your story, with that stick in your hand when you tell it! Take it and stand up in front of me!" Her face was white; she trembled when she lifted the staff from his knees. An old man's whim! The girl believed that she understood better than he the instinct which was prompting him to deliver over the scepter which he had treasured for so long. And some sort of instinct, trickling in the blood from that riverman forebear, prompted her strike a pose, which brought a yelp of admiration from the old man. She had set the steel nose close to her right foot and propped the staff, with right arm fully extended, swinging the stick with a man-fashion sweep.