"Gotta go to work," he informed them gravely. "What at?" Isabel inquired. "Scalin' timber," he replied. He danced off down the path to the beach, chanting: "Poor Robinson Crusoe, What made the poor man do so?" Already incorporating the reality of his environment into the child-world of make-believe. Rod smiled; he had done the same thing himself, alone, happily, through just such hot, smoky, August days long ago. The boy clambered over a heap of stovewood, measuring with his stick, making marks on a bit of notepaper just as the scaler did who walked the boom with pad and pencil and a six-foot scaling rule. For a time the murmur of Isabel's and Andy's conversation accompanied Rod's thoughts. He continued to stare across at Hawk's Nest. A problem pressed him for solution, a question which involved closely that gray house with its glowing roof of red tiles, from behind which rose the conical top of the great cedar, in the shadow of which so many Norquays took their last rest. He was approaching a critical stage in his affairs. He did not know how much longer he could carry on. Producing costs overtook market prices, would soon pass them. Only by a foresighted contract with a Puget Sound pulp mill had he kept going so long. In a month that would expire. It could not be renewed on the same terms. The great pulp plant in Phillips Arm which the Norquay Trust had financed and which had never ground a ton of pulp until Rod forced it into production, offered him prices he couldn't take on the wages paid and hours worked. He wouldn't know where to turn soon, unless he abandoned his present policy, cut wages to the bone, got into line with the other employers. That seemed to him like a breach of faith. He had made a fortune on the labor of his men already; that he was poorer in funds than at the beginning did not alter the case. The Norquay Trust had swallowed the profits. It would swallow a vast sum yet before its appetite was glutted. It hurt him to think of these men paying for Grove's mismanagement by lengthened hours and shortened pay. Nor did he wish to shut down and wait a turn in the market. A shutdown meant a cessation of revenue; that in turn might precipitate the disaster he had struggled so hard to avert. It was a very real difficulty. He was stirred out of these reflections by a silence which had all the effect of a disturbing sound. He came back to the immediate present. Isabel still sat on the step, a dainty figure in a blue sweater and pleated tan skirt, staring after Andy's retreating figure. "Your right bower," she said complainingly, turning to meet Rod's gaze, "is the stupidest man I know." "You're a mile off the mark," Rod contradicted. "He is," she repeated. "He's afraid of me." "Andy Hall," Rod answered dryly, "is not afraid of anything or any one, least of all a harmless person like you."