"Yes, he's back. But he wouldn't be if I was boss. That's the sort o' Sunday-school racket I ain't no use for. He's back, because you say he's to work right along. Sort of to help him. Yes, he's back. He's been fightin'-drunk fer six nights, and I'd hate to say he's dead sober now."
"Yet you signed him on. Why?"
"Oh, as to that, he's sober, I guess. But the drink's in him. I tell you, boss, he's rotten—plumb rotten—when the drink's in him. I know him. Say——"
But Dave had had enough.
"You say he's sober—well, let it go at that. The man can do his work. That's the important thing to us. Just now we can't bother with his morals. Still, you'd best keep an eye on him."
He turned to his books, and Dawson busied himself with the checkers' sheets. For some time both men worked without exchanging a word, and the only interruption was the regular coming of the tally boys, who brought the check slips of the lumber measurements.
Through the thin partitions the roar of machinery was incessant, and at frequent intervals the hoarse shouts of the "checkers" reached them. But this disturbed them not at all. It was what they were used to, what they liked to hear, for it told of the work going forward without hitch of any sort.
At last the master of the mills looked up from a mass of figures. He had been making careful calculations.
"We're short, Dawson," he said briefly.
"Short by half a million feet," the foreman returned, without even looking round.