"Now," he began with some diffidence, "you cut me off short when I met you the other day, and one of my reasons for coming over was to get through with what I was saying then. It's just this--I owe you a good deal for taking care of Kitty; she's very grateful, and thinks no end of you, I want to say I'll always feel you have a claim on me." Vane smiled at him. It was evident that Kitty had taken her lover into her confidence with regard to her trip on board the sloop, and, that she had done so said a good deal for her. "It didn't cost me any trouble," Vane replied. "We were coming down to Vancouver, anyway." Drayton's embarrassment became more obvious. "It cost you some dollars; there were the tickets. Now I feel I have to----" Vane stopped him. "When you are married to Miss Blake you can pay me back, if it will be a relief to you. When's the wedding to be?" "In a couple of months," said Drayton, who saw it would be useless to protest. "I'm a clerk in the Winstanley mills, and, as one of the staff is going, I'll get a move up then. We are to be married as soon as I do." He said a little more on the same subject, and then, after a few moments' silence added: "I wonder if the Clermont business keeps your hands full, Mr. Vane." "It doesn't. It's a fact I'm beginning to regret." Drayton appeared to consider. "Well," he said, "folks seem to regard you as a rising man with snap in him, and there's a matter I might, perhaps, bring before you. Let me explain. I've taken an interest, outside my routine work in the lumber trade of this province and its subsidiary branches. I figured any knowledge I could pick up might stand me in some dollars some day. So far"--he smiled ruefully--"it hasn't done so." "Go on," said Vane, whose curiosity was aroused. "Well, I think that pulping spruce--paper spruce--is likely to be scarce soon. The supply's not unlimited and the world's consumption is going up by jumps." "There's a good deal of timber you could make pulp of in British Columbia alone," Vane interposed. "Sure. But there's not a very great deal of spruce that could be milled into high-grade paper pulp; and it's rapidly getting worked out in most other countries. Then, as a rule, it's mixed up with the firs, cedars and cypresses; and that means the cutting of logging roads to each cluster of milling trees. There's another point--a good deal of the spruce lies back from water or a railroad, and it would be costly to bring in milling plant or pack the pulp out." "That's obvious," said Vane: "for you might have to haul every pound of freight over a breakneck divide." Drayton leaned forward confidentially. "Then if one struck high-grade paper spruce--a valley full of it--with water power and easy access to the sea, there ought to be dollars in the thing?" "Yes," said Vane, with growing interest. "That is very probable." "I could put you on the track of such a valley," Drayton replied.