Page:Hugh Pendexter--The young timber-cruisers.djvu/263

 see the company will stand in a bad light ’less we win. I vum! I wish I’d know’d ahead that ye’d been over the ground. I guess I’d refused to undertake the job.”

“It’s too late for you to withdraw now,” reminded the professor. “But it is my duty as an honest man to repeat that I do not believe you can prove anything in favor of the company by going up there. Still you must go, of course.”

“If we can prove Nace out over that public lot that might be used as a club against him,” suggested Abner, scowling at his thick boots.

“Hardly,” denied the professor. “I’ve studied human nature enough to know that Nace will never let a hundred thousand dollars slip through his fingers for the sake of evading unwholesome publicity. If he has to he’ll pay the value of the stumpage—I believe you said it would run in excess of ten thousand dollars—and then he will clean up his tenth of a million. So far as injuring his reputation is concerned he won’t care a penny, for he knows he has none to be injured. He simply will bribe some paper to explain how it was a natural mistake for him to get over the line; then he’ll give a new bell to some schoolhouse, put a