room. The lamps became dimmer. Finally the chore boy put them out. Then at last Collins appeared, followed closely by Fox.
"You didn't get up to eat with the men?" the bookkeeper asked Bob a trifle curiously. "You don't need to do that. We eat with Mrs. Hallowell at seven."
At eight o'clock the little bookkeeper opened the office door and ushered Bob in to the scene of his duties.
"You're to help me," said Collins concisely. "I have the books. Our other duties are to make out time checks for the men, to answer the correspondence in our province, to keep track of camp supplies, and to keep tab on shipments and the stock on hand and sawed each day. There's your desk. You'll find time blanks and everything there. The copying press is in the corner. Over here is the tally board," He led the way to a pine bulletin, perhaps four feet square, into which were screwed a hundred or more small brass screw hooks. From each depended a small pine tablet or tag inscribed with many figures. "Do you understand a tally board?" Collins asked.
"No," replied Bob.
"Well, these screw hooks are arranged just like a map of the lumber yards. Each hook represents one of the lumber piles — or rather the location of a lumber pile. The tags hanging from them represent the lumber piles themselves; see?"
"Sure," said Bob. Now that he understood he could follow out on this strange map the blocks, streets and alleys of that silent, tenantless city.
"On these tags," pursued Collins, "are figures. These figures show how much lumber is in each pile, and what kind it is, and of what quality. In that way we know just what we have and where it is. The sealers report to us every day just what has been shipped out, and what has been piled from the mill. From their reports we change the figures on the tags. I'm going to let you take care of that."
Bob bestowed his long figure at the desk assigned him, and went to work. He was interested, for it was all new to him. Men were constantly in and out on all sorts of errands. Fox came to shake hands and wish him well; he was off on the ten o'clock train. Bob checked over a long invoice of camp supplies; manipulated the copying press; and, under Collins's instructions, made out time checks against the next pay day. The insistence of details kept him at the stretch until noon surprised him.
After dinner and a breath of fresh air, he plunged again into his tasks. Now he had the scalers' noon reports to transfer to the tally board. He was intensely interested by the novelty of it all; but even this early he encountered his old difficulties in the matter of figures. He made no mistakes, but in order to correlate, remember and transfer correctly he was forced to an utterly disproportionate intensity of application. To the tally board he brought more absolute concentration and will-power than did Collins to all his manifold tasks. So evidently painstaking was he, that the little bookkeeper glanced at him sharply once or twice. However, he said nothing.
When darkness approached the bookkeeper closed his ledger and came over to Bob's desk. In ten minutes he ran deftly over Bob's afternoon work; re-checking the supply invoices, verifying the time checks, comparing the tallies with the scalers' reports. So swiftly and accurately did he accomplish this, with so little hesitation and so assured a belief in his own correctness that the really taxing job seemed merely a bit of light mental gymnastics after the day's work.
"Good!" he complimented Bob; "everything's correct."
Bob nodded, a little gloomily. It might be correct; but he was very tired from the strain of it.
"It'll come easier with practice," said Collins; "always difficult to do a new thing."
The whistle blew. Bob went directly to his room and sat down on the edge of his bed. In spite of Collins's kindly meant reassurances, the iron of doubt had entered his soul. He had tried for four months, and was no nearer facility than when he started.
"If a man hadn't learned better than that, I'd have called him a dub and told him to get off the squad," he said to himself, a little bitterly. He thought a moment. "I guess I'm tired. I must buck up. If Collins and Archie can do it, I can. It's all in the game. Of course, it takes time and training. Get in the game!"
IX
This was on Tuesday. During the rest of the week Bob worked hard. Even a skilled man would have been kept busy by the multitude of details that poured in on the little office. Poor Bob was far from skilled. He felt as awkward amid all these swift and accurate activities as he had when at sixteen it became necessary to force his overgrown frame into a crowded drawing room. He tried very hard, as he always did with everything. When Collins succinctly called his attention to a discrepancy in his figurings, he smiled his slow, winning, troubled smile, thrust the hair back from his clear eyes, and bent his lean athlete's frame again to the labour. He soon discovered that this work demanded speed as well as accuracy. "And I need a ten-acre lot to turn around in," he told himself half humorously. "I'm a regular ice-wagon."
He now came to look back on his college triumphs with an exaggerated but wholesome reaction. His athletic prowess had given him great prominence in college circles. Girls had been flattered at his attention; his classmates had deferred to his skill and experience; his juniors had, in the manner of college boys, looked up to him as to a demi-god. Then for the few months of the football season the newspapers had made of him a national character. His picture appeared at least once a week; his opinions were recorded; his physical measurements carefully detailed. When he appeared on the streets and in hotel lobbies, people were apt to recognize him and whisper furtively to one another. Bob was naturally the most modest youth in the world, and he hated a "fuss" after the delightfully normal fashion of normal boys, but all this could not fail to have its subtle effect. He went out into the world without conceit, but confident of his ability to take his place with the best of them.
His first experience showed him wholly second in natural qualifications, in ability to learn, and in training to men subordinate in the business world.
"I'm just plain dub," he told himself. "I thought myself some pumpkins and got all swelled up inside because good' food and leisure and heredity gave me a husky build! Football! What good does that do me here? Four out of five of these rivermen are huskier than I am. Me a business man! Why I can't seem even to learn the first principles of the first job of the whole lot! I've got to!" he admonished; himself grimly. "I hate a fellow who doesn't make good!"' and with a very determined set to his handsome chin he hurled the whole force of his young energies at those elusive figures that somehow would lie.
The week slipped by in this struggle. It was much worse than in the Chicago office. There Bob was allowed all the time he thought he needed. Here one task followed close on the heels of another, without chance for a breathing space or room to take bearings. Bob had to do the best he could, commit the result to a merciful providence, and seize the next job by the throat.
One morning he awoke with a jump to find it was seven o'clock. He had heard neither whistle, and must have overslept! Hastily he leaped into his clothes, and rushed out into the dining room. There he found the chore-boy leisurely feeding a just-lighted kitchen fire. To Bob's exclamation of astonishment he looked up.
"Sunday," he grinned; "breakfus' at eight."
The week had gone without Bob's having realized the fact.
Mrs. Hallowell came in a moment later, smiling at the winning, handsome young man in her fat and good-humoured manner. Bob was seized with an inspiration.
"Mrs. Hallowell," he said persuasively, "just let me rummage around for five minutes, will you?"
"You that hungry?" she chuckled. "Law! I'll have breakfast in an hour."
"It isn't that," said Bob; "but I want to get some air to-day. I'm not used to being in an office. I want to steal a hunk of bread, and a few of your good doughnuts and a slice of cheese for breakfast and lunch."
"A cup of hot coffee would do you more good," objected Mrs. Hallowell.
"Please," begged Bob, "and I won't disturb