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332 you've been through, what you're going through right now, do you think it practical?"

"I am as insistent on it as you are on scaring me. I know what you've been up to, you and your friends. You've backed me into a corner. There's no place to turn and that is why I have to come to you, Mr. Taylor, for help."

She turned to address Luke, hands on her chair arms, leaning forward eagerly. He did not change a muscle, a line of expression; he waited, and Rowe waited. Her voice was not so steady when she started in again:

"When we commence to turn over, Mr. Taylor, we should produce about four million feet a year—indefinitely. But from the time the cutting starts there will be an increasing amount for fifty years because each year, for fifty years, there will be another year's growth on the balance of the stand, until the last cut of the first rotation would be a hundred years old. That would be very nice pine, Mr. Taylor, even compared to the pine you cut yourself in Michigan—"

The old man's mouth worked briefly and he swallowed otherwise, no movement.

"And during all those years there will be a steady pick-up in quality. Dense pine cleans itself fast after fifty years—and we will be near the peak of the national shortage, then. There should be prices, Mr. Taylor—big prices, to say nothing of the need it will fill—When the last block of the hundred-year-old pine was going through the mill the first block will be back again, fifty years old and ready, and from then on there would always be a fifty-year-old lot ready for the saw—always, Mr. Taylor—always—every year!"