"It's the very best I can do."
"Can't you pay me five or ten dollars now?"
"No. The most I can give you is two dollars."
"Then give me that. And see you keep your word about the balance." And stuffing the bill Dale handed him into his pocket, Hen McNair had gone off grumbling something about the want of honor in a lad who wouldn't pull himself together and pay his father's honest debts.
The sawmill owned by John Larson was run both by water power and by steam—the latter helping out the former when the flow of the stream was not at its best. Rain had been wanting for several weeks, and this had delayed a drive of logs the mill owner had counted on, and had also made it necessary to depend entirely on steam as a motive power. The plant employed twenty-four hands, and this and another mill on the opposite shore were the main industries of the Run.
"How did you make out about those logs, Dale?" questioned a fellow worker in the yard, as the young lumberman resumed his labors.
"Didn't get them," was the laconic answer.
"Didn't think you would," went on Philip Sommers. "Hickley is in with the pulp mill. If he can't get logs, what is the old man going to do?"
"He'll have to shut down."
"Phew! That's bad!"