They live on
their nine dollars a week, and go hungry when they lose their jobs.
They stand on their own feet, and yet--in case of severe illness or
actual starvation--the old man is there! It gives them a courage to
be contented on nothing. So Orde would have gone to almost any
lengths to keep free "Bobby's tract," but it stood always between
himself and disaster. And a loan on western timber could be paid
off just as easily as a loan on eastern timber; when you came right
down to that. Even could he have known his partner's intentions,
they would, on this account, have caused him no uneasiness, however
angry they would have made him, or however determined to break the
partnership. Even though Newmark destroyed utterly the firm's
profits for the remaining year and a half the notes had to run, he
could not thereby ruin Orde's chances. A loan on the California
timber would solve all problems now. In this reasoning Orde would
have committed the mistake of all large and generous temperaments
when called upon to measure natures more subtle than their own. He
would have underestimated both Newmark's resources and his own grasp
of situations.*
* The author has considered it useless to burden the course of the
narrative with a detailed account of Newmark's financial manoeuvres.
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