Up on the hill Hollister's
men felled trees with warning shouts and tumultuous crashings. They
attacked the prone trunks with axe and saw and iron wedges,
Lilliputians rending the body of a fallen giant. The bolt piles grew;
they were hurled swiftly down the chute into the dwindling river,
rafted to the mill. All this time the price of shingles in the open
market rose and rose, like a tide strongly on the flood, of which no
man could prophesy the high-water mark. Money flowed to Hollister's
pockets, to the pockets of his men. The value of his standing timber
grew by leaps and bounds. And always Sam Carr, who had no economic
illusions, urged Hollister on, predicting before long the inevitable
reaction.
The days shortened. Through the long evenings Hollister's house
became a sort of social center. Lawanne would come in after supper,
sometimes inert, dumb, to sit in a corner smoking a pipe,--again
filled with a curious exhilaration, to talk unceasingly of everything
that came into his mind, to thump ragtime on the piano and sing a
variety of inconsequential songs in a velvety baritone.
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