"SILAS KINGSLEY."
Stratton held the letter a thoughtful interval, then he rose and went over and laid it on Smith's smouldering fire. He stood watching it break into flame and curl up like a brown, dead leaf. "But it will influence him," he said. "He can't help it; it will raise a question."
He turned to untie his fretting horse. "So, Donald, old fellow, there is light ahead; we are almost out of the woods. A little more dishonor," he set his foot in the stirrup and swung himself up, "and we can afford to make a fresh start."
CHAPTER XVIII
WATER-LOGGED
At Freeport the following winter was severe. Snow lay for weeks, thawing, freezing, accumulating with every squall that came over from the mountains, and falling in small avalanches which started landslides all along the bluff. On some mornings the upper part of the harbor below Duwamish flats was covered with ice, which the rising tide lifted and broke into sheets. The logs taken from the water were glazed, and in still places inside the boom, ice packed solid. And with the unusual cold a lull in construction settled over the Northwest; there came a second drop in the prices of exported lumber. Many of the smaller mills closed under a subsidy. But the Judge, in answer to Forrest's statements of the situation, advised the cutting down of expenses to a minimum, and keeping things going, if only to give employment to the men. He had heard the Puget Sound country was flooded with idle mechanics, laborers, hundreds of construction hands discharged since the completion of the Northern Pacific. And of course the prevailing Eastern panic had in many instances caused the recall of invested capital. But he was confident that another half-year would see a pronounced revival; at any rate he would be able to make a trip home by that time, and he wanted to be on the ground and see conditions for himself before he came to a final decision.
At the close of January the men still received "reg'lar pay," to quote Mason, but the books showed that the manager's salary was accumulating to his credit. Other accounts indicated that the junior partner was overdrawing. He had his impulses of industry and economy when he tried to balance a considerable delinquency by spending an interval at the mills; but he always annulled the results by a yet deeper plunge, and his only systematic restriction was in deferring to take a house in town.
Forrest was thinking of Kingsley while he finished his rounds of the mills. It was at the close of a bleak day; there was an increasing wind; ragged cloud scurried overhead, the forerunner of the black masses driving up in the southwest. Philip was presumably in Victoria. He had not heard from him for a week. "But," he told himself, as he came down the steps from the landing to the walk, "it's useless to bother the Judge with this side of it, now. It's as he says, he can't understand things fully until he is on the ground."
He stopped at the branch to Kingsley's house to speak to the old watchman, who was stumping up from the lower dock. "Well, Mason," he said, "it's another blow."
"Ay, sir." The old sailor swung around to look at the running sea. He knew the ships over the harbor were taking precautions against the growing storm; stretching an extra hawser, dropping a second and third anchor, clearing decks. But there was no vessel at the Freeport wharves; the bark that had sailed that morning left no other receiving.