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Updated: May 11, 2025
A word lightly cast forth at the club table where he always lunched, and he could get a clue to almost anything of current interest. And that noon, after he had first seen Mrs. Clark and her niece, my friend Edsall happened to be at the judge's table. Orcutt asked him what he knew about the Clark property in Alton. Edsall happened to know almost all of importance that has been told here and more.
Cameron said he had wired Orcutt at the bank, and I might meet him coming in." For some time he stood irresolute. "There's a way out straight south," he speculated, "about three hundred miles, and a good share of it water trail. I'll be all right if I can pick up a canoe, and I can get grub of the Indians."
Janet had escaped. "Miss Bumpus told me you wanted to see me. I was just going to ring you up," Ditmar informed him. "She's a clever young woman, seems to take such an interest in things," Orcutt observed. "And she's always on the job. Only yesterday I saw her going through the mill with young Caldwell." Ditmar dropped the paper-weight he held. "Oh, she went through, did she?"
It was then I called you up, for the whole scheme hit me like a flash. Don't you see it? If I worked for him, I'd draw a salary, and a good one and nothing more. But if I should interest sufficient capital to step in on the first day of July when those options expire, and buy up the whole tract, where would McNabb be?" Orcutt tapped thoughtfully upon his desk pad with the tip of his pencil.
Orcutt, whom he had since denounced as an idiotic old woman, had made an impression, aroused in him the ever-abiding concern for the mill which was his life's passion and which had been but temporarily displaced by his infatuation with her. That other passion was paramount. What was she beside it? Would he hesitate for a moment to sacrifice her if it came to a choice between them?
If he don't, well and good again I still have a job, and you get seven dollars an acre, instead of five." "But will the other be here?" Wentworth shrugged. "That is what I have been asking myself for a week. Will McNabb come? Will Orcutt come? Or will they both come? In the latter case I may have let myself in for some unpleasant complications. But I had to take a chance to avoid taking a chance."
Orcutt most certainly would, for McNabb had once publicly compared it with her coat, much to the New York coat's detriment and Mrs. Orcutt's humiliation. It was not altogether loyalty for his employer that led him to plot the woman an uncomfortable evening, for he owed her a grudge on his own account.
The words were a groan. "I'm ruined. Ruined, I tell you! There's just one chance. John, the material that's on your mill site. Will you take it over?" "Sure, I'll take it," answered McNabb. "On the same terms you offered for my tote-road. Ten cents on the dollar, wasn't it, Orcutt?" "But, man, you don't understand!" "I understand that the shoe is on the other foot," answered McNabb, coldly.
Indian squaws, such as Molly Orcutt, sold many a decoction of leaves and barks to the planters, and, like Hiawatha, "Wandered eastward, wandered westward, Teaching men the use of simples, And the antidotes for poisons, And the cure of all diseases." A good old Connecticut doctor had a negro servant, Primus, who rode with him and helped him in his surgery and shop.
After Orcutt departed he sat for awhile whistling a tune, from a popular musical play, keeping time by drumming with his fingers on the desk. That Mr. Semple, the mill treasurer, came down from Boston that morning to confer with Ditmar was for Janet in the nature of a reprieve.
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