"I wonder if the Clermont business keeps your hands full, Mr. Vane?"
"It doesn't. It's a fact I'm beginning to regret."
Drayton appeared to consider.
"Well," he said, "people seem to regard you as a rising man with snap in him, and there's a matter I might, perhaps, bring before you. Let me explain. I'm a clerk on small pay, but I've taken an interest outside my routine work in the lumber trade of this Province and its subsidiary branches. I figured any knowledge I could pick up might stand me in some money some day. So far"—he smiled ruefully—"it hasn't done so."
"Go on," prompted Vane. His curiosity was aroused.
"It has struck me that pulping spruce—paper spruce—is likely to be scarce presently. The supply's not unlimited and the world's consumption is going up by jumps."
"There's a good deal of timber you could use for pulp, in British
Columbia alone," Vane interposed.
"Sure. But there's not a very great deal that could be milled into high-grade paper pulp; and it's getting rapidly worked out in most other countries. Then, as a rule, it's mixed up with firs, cedars and cypresses; and that means the cutting of logging roads to each cluster of milling trees. There's another point—a good deal of the spruce lies back from water or a railroad, and in some cases it would be costly to bring in a milling plant or to pack the pulp out."
"That's obvious; anyway, where you would have to haul every pound of freight over a breakneck divide."
Drayton leaned forward confidentially.