Bob's obvious course was to talk the whole matter over with his superior officer, and that is exactly what he intended to do. Instead, he hunted up Amy. He justified this course by the rather sophistical reflection that in her he would encounter the most positive force to the contrary of the proposition he had just received. Amy stood first, last and all the time for the Service; her heart was wholly in its cause. In her opinion he would gain the advantage of a direct antithesis to the ideas propounded by his father. This appeared to Bob an eminently just arrangement, but failed to account for a certain rather breathless excitement as he caught sight of Amy's sleek head bending over a pan of peas.

"Amy," said he, dropping down at her feet, "I want your advice."

She let fall her hands and looked at him with the refreshing directness peculiarly her own.

"Father wants me to take charge of the Wolverine Company's operations," he began.

"Well?" she urged him after a pause.

"What do you think of it?"

"I thought you had worked that all out for yourself some time ago."

"I had. But father and Mr. Welton are getting a little too old to handle such a proposition, and they are looking to me--" he paused.

"That situation is no different than it has been," she suggested. "What else?"

Bob laughed.

"You see through me very easily, don't you? Well, the situation is changed. I'm being bribed."

"Bribed!" Amy cried, throwing her head back.

"Extra inducements offered. They make it hard for me to refuse, without seeming positively brutal. They offer me complete charge--to do as I want. I can run the works absolutely according to my own ideas. Don't you see how I am going to hurt them when I refuse under such circumstances?"

"Refuse!" cried Amy. "Refuse! What do you mean!"

"Do you think I ought to leave the Service?" stammered Bob blankly.

"Why, it's the best chance the Service has ever had!" said Amy, the words fairly tumbling over one another. "You must never dream of refusing. It's your chance--it's our chance. It's the one thing we've lacked, the opportunity of showing lumbermen everywhere that the thing can be made to pay. It's the one thing we've lacked. Oh, _what_ a chance!"

"But--but," objected Bob--"it means giving up the Serv............