III
The summit of Lookout Cliff offered a wonderful view on this clear day of the lake and the forests below. Nannabijou camp from there seemed a tiny gash in a world of wilderness; the river and Solomon Creek silver threads winding down to Superior. On the outer side the cliff descended, a sheer wall, five hundred feet to the woods on the side of the mountain, the elevation being one thousand seven hundred and fifty feet above sea-level. The cliff is known among sailormen of the Great Lakes as the highest piece of land on the North Shore.
“This pinnacle,” Acey Smith was saying, “was held sacred by the pagan Indians as the eerie of the Thunder Eagle, a demi-god supposed to rule the land and the water as far as his eyes could see.
“It therefore did not seem unfitting,” he continued quietly, “to bring you to this spot to declare you, as I do now, undisputed mistress of the North Shore.”
She looked at him thoroughly bewildered, for the moment unable to think what answer to make.
“I told you there would be no mystery after to-day,” he went on, “and what I am about to tell you is bald fact. To-day, on your twenty-first birthday, Miss Josephine Stone, you become heir to the estate of your grandfather, Joseph Stone, and that estate now includes all the holdings of the North Star Towing and Contracting Company and the controlling share in all its various subsidiaries. In compliance with the dying injunction of your grandfather, the ownership of those properties has been transferred to your name, where they were formerly held in trust by myself and the executives of the North Star for you under the pseudonym of ‘J.C.X.’”
“But I can’t understand all this,” she murmured in perplexity. “Grandfather, I always understood, was not very wealthy. He was merely a prospector and scientist.”
“True,” replied her companion, “and in what you do not understand lies the story—a story in which I’m afraid I will have to tell altogether too much about myself.”
“Please do tell me,” she urged. “I am sure I will be deeply interested in that very part of it.”
“Then let’s step over yonder where we will be sheltered from the breeze and still have the benefit of the sunshine.”
Acey Smith unslung his pack and hung it by one of the straps on the bough of a stunted jackpine whose roots somehow drew sustenance from a crevice near the edge of the cliff. He led the girl to a seat on a moss-covered ledge and himself sat down facing her.