"I feel safe enough," Stagg assured him. "But you can imagine how I would have felt if the Company'd failed, sir. So I'm bound to be prejudiced in your favor. If you'll excuse me, sir, I've known the Norquay family a long time, and it wouldn't have seemed natural for it to let a thing like that happen. People like you, Mr. Rod, may get in a hole; but you can't be kept there. You always get up somehow. I'll be awfully sorry to leave. I really will. This place is like home to me. I'll hope to come back as soon as you get things straightened out, Mr. Rod." Rod sat thinking for a few seconds. "Thank you, Stagg," he said then, very gently. "I appreciate what you have said. You seem to understand quite well some things that other people, who should, don't see at all." "Now," he continued, after a pause, "I want you to put everything in order this week. Cover the furniture and put away china and silver and linen and so on. Fix the house properly. It never was closed before, but you will know what should be done. When you're finished I'll pay you all off. Cook, I understand, has relatives living on the other side of Valdez. The gardeners can work for me in the woods, if they wish. The housemaids are flappers who haven't had time to get attached either to us or the place. That'll be all, Stagg. Thanks." The man got up. He seemed to hesitate, took a step or two, stopped. "May I ask if you're going to sell Hawk's Nest, sir?" he finally blurted out. Rod shook his head. "No, Stagg. They may take it away from me eventually. But it is not for sale." "Thank you, sir. I couldn't believe you'd think of selling Hawk's Nest, sir." Stagg bowed and closed the door softly behind him. CHAPTER XXVI Sometimes Rod's heart troubled him so that he would turn in his ascent of a hill to some part of the works and go down again, stamp, stamp, joggling it from that enfeebled flutter back to its normal beat. And afterward he would sit on a log for awhile, struggling against a wave of depression. So much depended on him alone. He was the mainspring. If he broke or ran down, the job must go unfinished; people, his own people and many others, must suffer. And yet, when he faced the prospect of going on and on like that, flogging a weak heart to its work, keeping his brain alert to direct a big undertaking and the mass of detail involved, making money and more money and pouring it like water into an endless pipe, he felt a profound weariness, an unutterable distaste for this game of profit-creating which other men played with such gusto.