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Rh I had a man here only two years ago who worked with you on the Saginaw. Your—your son has told me about you.

"Your—your bookkeeper, here, told me in our first talk that you wanted this pine, because—well, not for the money. You want it because it will take you back to those days when you were happier, when you thought you were contented—"

"Darned moonshine!—Moonshine, like the rest!"

"No, Mr. Taylor." She did not lift her voice beyond its low pitch. "My father felt the same way; all you men who logged off Michigan pine lands felt lost when the last drive went down—I know—I was a little girl with them. And I saw you, yesterday, walking in my forest, walking in Michigan white pine. I think I know something of how you felt—"

His eyes fell away from her face; then flashed back. She took a step nearer him.

"They're gone, the old Michigan stands, Mr. Taylor, but there's a new forest coming on, here—we're in the heart of it. If I should sell to you and you should run twenty million a year, which was big those days, but isn't now—Foraker's Folly wouldn't last long. But if we go through with my father's plan—you and I—we can cut four million and up a year—forever."

"Moonshine! It's—"

"No, it isn't a dream, Mr. Taylor!" voice lifting. "It's real! It's as real as those trees outside my house! The last faller hasn't cried, 'Timber!' for the last Michigan white pine! We haven't seen the last of it going down iced roads to the dumps; we haven't seen the Blueberry bank-full in the winter time with white pine logs for