Page:Harold Titus--Timber.djvu/23

Rh river again before them spattered by the superwhite moonlight. The engine stopped and upon them burst the cries of millions of night bodies, a shrill, sustained chorus, a metallic trill. A wind rippled the stream and moonbeams flashed from it, like rays from mirrors. A bunch of coots, sleeping on the water, showed black not fifty yards from them.

Marcia leaned forward and switched off the dash light; her slim, very cool hand found Taylor's.

"Now what?" she said gravely—and Taylor told what had taken place with his father; told it, mostly, looking straight into her eyes, which looked back at him, wide, understanding and patient, but when he finished his narrative of what had happened and turned his gaze out on the river, the girl's eyes narrowed ever so slightly, and a look that was not patience showed there.

"My father's a queer old bird," he went on. "He's never understood me. He's never seemed to have much interest in me, especially since I went away to college; never stinted me in allowance and never crabbed because I didn't settle down, but there hasn't been much in common—except that we're father and son. I hadn't intended to put it up to him quite this way, but he forced my hand. He doesn't like the notion of any one getting anything without sweating for it, he doesn't like to have any one have opinions of his own—Logs are worth a lot of money, I know, but this isn't a marker to what I'd expected he would do for me. He knows, as well as I know, that it won't fill the bill and give me any sort of a start. I've thought it over and the only answer I can find is that he wants to see what I am wound on."

"And if you make good on this—?"