"How about his mail? More of it coming in?"
"Yes, great heaps of letters. You never saw the like."
"I'll have them delivered to his town office, hereafter," said Updyke. "I can't spare the time to run down there to read them. I'm too busy just now."
"Very well, Mr. Updyke, good night, sir," said Mrs. Bond, and with that off his mind the big fellow turned in for the night.
CHAPTER XV. PARKINS RUNS AMUCK
Fortunately Henry Updyke was no slave to his nerves. He could fall into slumber as his head touched the pillow, and six hours later roll out for the day. Just approaching the middle-age period, sleep meant nothing to a man of his bulk. So on this night of all nights the big fellow bolstered himself and concentrated his thoughts on the girl of his heart. He was glad that she had a mind of her own, and, on the other hand, could take advice—yet needing little. Many times he had told her to attend certain matters, to find that she had anticipated his wishes. Another thing, most pleasant to reflect upon, was that no episode of the Parkins variety had entered her life, and "By the Great Horn Spoon"—which was his most violent expletive—"there never would be!"
The thought of Parkins had a tingling effect upon Updyke, as he brought to mind a certain far-away monastery, hid away amid the timber-lands, one hundred miles northwest of Quebec. There the padrone system still flourished under the ban of a French-Canadian lumber company, and Parkins had become one of the lumber jack gang. Three years was his "sign up," after a stormy session with the big boss to whom he had been consigned by a Montreal employment bureau. To attempt an escape was to die by starvation, or wild beasts, or woodticks, it mattered not which. But the Parkins brain was not so far scrambled that he could not work himself into the good offices of the boss of the gang. He first helped the paymaster, and kept up the records. Then the paymaster took sick and Parkins became head of the accounting, for which a rude shack answered the needs of protection—at the same time, a roof for his head.
All these details of the Parkins' entourage came through on reports from Updyke's Quebec agents. Invariably, on answering, the New York office warned against too much freedom of action, for Parkins was resourceful, and might effect an escape. All this was poopoohed by the big boss at the lumber-jack camp. Just to show his confidence in Parkins he sent him to Quebec with an order for gold coin, to relieve the priests of the region, whose needs were urgent after the winter's deep snows. The scrip of the company had fallen far below par, which caused a dull roar among the thrifty tree choppers.