big jobs and wherever the nature of the country will permit. The
old-fashioned, picturesque ice-road sleigh-haul will last as long
as north-woods lumbering,--even in the railroad districts,--but the
locomotive now does the heavy work.

With the capital to be obtained from the following winter's product,
Thorpe hoped to be able to establish a branch which should run from
a point some two miles behind Camp One, to a "dump" a short distance
above the mill. For this he had made all the estimates, and even the
preliminary survey. He was therefore the more grievously
disappointed,
when Wallace Carpenter made it impossible for him to do so.

He was sitting in the mill-office one day about the middle of July.
Herrick, the engineer, had just been in. He could not keep the
engine in order, although Thorpe knew that it could be done.

"I've sot up nights with her," said Herrick, "and she's no go. I
think I can fix her when my head gets all right. I got headachy
lately. And somehow that last lot of Babbit metal didn't seem to
act just right."

Thorpe looked out of the window, tapping his desk slowly with the
end of a lead pencil.

"Collins," said he to the bookkeeper, without raising his voice or
altering his position, "make out Herrick's time."

The man stood there astonished.