“Calc’late you’re right,” says Silas.

“Men work by the piece or by the d-day?”

“Some of both,” says Silas.

It looked pretty close to hopeless. I didn’t understand exactly what Mark was getting at all the time, but I sensed some of it, and it looked to me like we was grabbing holt of about as big a muddle as anybody ever saw.

“Could we start up this mill to-morrow?” Mark asked.

“Calc’late we could—if we could git the help and if nothin’ else didn’t prevent.”

“Have you got l-logs?”

Silas pointed out of the window to the log-yard, and anybody could see he did have logs, quite a consid’able stack of them.

“Paid for?” says Mark.

“Mostly,” says Silas.