Except on two or three hundred acres of jungle at the northern end there was nothing in all that stretch to hamper a rigging-slinger with his snaky cables. The fallers could lay a tree where they wished. The high-lead gear could snatch the logs out at top speed. Rod could imagine old Jim Handy, the human logging machine, looking with glad eyes on such ground and such timber. Records would be made there. Big days that the loggers would talk about in years to come; days when more timber would go down to float within the boomsticks than ever was moved by a crew of men between sun and sun. And that was why they were there now. He had hoped to save a part of this. But the pressure was too great. He had to have a given amount of revenue within a given time. Only by this means could it be secured. It was fortunate for him that he had this resource, doubly fortunate that it would go out on a rising market; for 1921 marked the turn of the tide. All lost save honor! He smiled at the self-righteous expression. He could strike an attitude and utter that worn phrase. It was true. But was it valid,--either the attitude or the phrase? Yes, for himself. He was throwing away every material advantage that men live, work, fight for, plan and scheme and struggle to attain. And he did not do it because it was a reasonable, logical course. He did it to gain peace with himself, to retain his own self-respect. He was so made that he could endure anything but the thought of meeting an enemy and skulking away in the face of danger, of treachery to a trust, of taking an unfair advantage. Yet there were times when he felt that it was too great a price to pay for another man's blunder. And then he would feel as if he had done something, or contemplated doing something, of which he was ashamed. He began to realize that the cheerful giver gives nothing of value compared to the glow he gets in giving; and that the man who can cheerfully sacrifice his dearest possessions has never yet been born. They were living once more in the old house. For how long Rod did not know and he tried not to think. The outcome was still uncertain; and where uncertainty lingers so does hope. At least, it was very pleasant to be there. Late one afternoon when the Dent Island operation had got well under way, a fog swept like a wet smoke through the Euclataw Passage. It lifted, broke, opened and closed as if it were of two minds whether to lay over the channel a veil of obscurity or disperse in torn fragments. While it hovered and shifted thus uncertain, and the tiderace in the rapids slacked, a white yacht nosed into Mermaid Bay and felt her way alongside the float. It was the _Kowloon_, come back like a ghost of other days. From the porch Rod, Mary, and Isabel recognized her through the fog haze as Grove's old yacht, which Laska had come into as the major portion of her husband's estate, and sold to her father.