C. Timber, Investments, Etc."
But Hollister had a practical knowledge of timber himself, acquired at
first hand. He had skirted his boundaries and traversed the fringes
of his property, and he saw scrubby, undersized trees where the
four-foot trunks of Douglas fir should have lifted in brown ranks. He
had looked into the bisecting hollow from different angles and marked
magnificent cedars,--but too few of them. Taken with the fact that
Lewis had failed to resell even at a reduced price, when standing
timber had doubled in value since the beginning of the war, Hollister
had grave doubts, which, however, he could not establish until he went
over the ground and made a rough estimate for himself.
This other matter of timber cutting was one he could settle in short
order. It roused his curiosity. It gave him a touch of the resentment
which stirs a man when he suspects himself of being the victim of
pillaging vandals. No matter that despair had recently colored his
mental vision; the sense of property right still functioned
unimpaired. To be marred and impoverished and shunned as if he were a
monstrosity were accomplished facts which had weighed upon him, an
intolerable burden.
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