He addressed the president of the Umcolcus Lumbering and Log-driving Association, requesting a conference with him and the directors of the body. If the letter thinly screened a demand for that conference it was the fault of Dwight Wade's resolute determination to face the issue. The letter remained long unanswered. Its receipt was not even acknowledged. The delay seemed to be contemptuous slighting of a possible overture of amicable settlement. Rodburd Ide sadly reasoned to this conviction, and daily gazed towards the south in search of the sheriff bringing writs of attachment with as much trepidation as he had gazed north in the black days when he expected Pulaski Britt. Dwight Wade was hardly more sanguine. And yet he was heartened by letters from his lawyer, who was up and at the foe once more. The lawyer intimated that an earnest conference was going on among the big fellows of the timber interests. In the past, prior to sittings of the legislature, they had heard the ominous stampings of the farmer's cowhide boots and the mutterings about unrighteous privileges, filched State timber lands, and unequal taxation. In the secret sessions of those directors the stand-pat roarings of their woods executive had drowned all pacific suggestions of compromise. But now the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt lay at home, unable to lift the ponderous hand which had pounded emphasis. In the end Wade decided that the big fellows were waiting to settle what they were to say before they summoned him to conference. That he was correct was proven by the letter that came at last. It was a courteous letter; it appointed a time of meeting, and named as the place John Barrett's office in "Castle Cut 'Em." On the evening before Wade left Castonia, Colin MacLeod summoned him, a cheerful convalescent who looked out daily into the new flush of June, and restlessly moved his stiffened limbs in his chair, and counted the days between himself and the free life out-of-doors.