"Like to look through, eh?" said the proprietor, after Owen's business was concluded. "All right, go ahead. Or, wait a few minutes and I'll go with you. We've just been setting up a new shingle machine, and she's a dandy," he added enthusiastically. Accordingly Owen waited around the office while Mr. Rice attended to several orders which a clerk had brought up for his inspection. The majority seemed to be satisfactory, but one order was peremptorily turned down. "Write to Foxy Hildan and tell him flatly that we can't fill that order unless we get a guarantee for the payment," Owen heard Philip Rice say. "I trusted that man once and got stuck, and I shan't do it again." "He was here day before yesterday and said it would be all right," answered the clerk, in a low voice. "Here? I didn't see him." "It was after you went away. I wanted him to come back and see you about it, but he was in a hurry to get up to Tunley and see Balasco--said it was something important." "Is he coming back this way?" "No, he said he was going on further after his stop at Tunley." "Did you say anything about a guarantee?" "No, sir. I didn't know you wanted it." "Well, write to him and tell him what I said. If he doesn't want to toe the mark we can get along without him. He may be foxy, but he can't play his little game on me. He stuck the Everett people about three thousand dollars, so Panglass said, and he always tells the truth." "Couldn't they get the money at all?" asked the clerk. "Not a dollar. You see, Hildan pretended to act only as an agent, and in some way they couldn't hold him for it. Oh, he's as slick as grease. If he wants my shingles he has got to pay cash or give me a cast-iron guarantee," concluded Philip Rice. Owen could not help but hear this conversation, and it interested him greatly. He had learned that Foxy Hildan had visited Ulmer Balasco two days before, and further, according to Mr. Rice and to a man named Panglass, Hildan was not to be trusted in any business transaction, and had already swindled some Everett timber or shingle dealers out of three thousand dollars. "I'll have to send Mr. Wilbur a letter as soon as I get back," he thought. "We can now give him about all the information he asked for, and the sooner he gets it the better I suppose it will be for him." "Now I'll show you through," said Philip Rice, and led the way from the office to the first of the big machines. This was a large band saw, of improved pattern, and Owen was immediately interested in seeing this machine cut into a log several feet in diameter and saw it from end to end with scarcely an effort. "We'd have little use in Maine for such a saw as that," he said. "It's the heavy wood-working machinery out here that counts."