The Huttig news., 1916-05-06
) CHAPTER 1
 The Heptaderm
.2RAN


 lard-the BrouilIard Grislow knew best-that he should suffer the purely technical talk of dams and reservoirs. bedrock anchorages, and the latest word in concrete structural processes to languish and should drift into per sonal "reminiscences over their first evening campfire in the Niquoia.
 As you were saying?" Grislow prompted, stretching himself luxuri- ously upon the fragrant banking of freshly clipped spruce tips, with his feet to the blaze and his hands locked lard was merely responding to the subtle influences of time, place and encompassments and took no shame for being an analytical rather than sympathetic listener. The hundred odd men of the pioneer party, relaxing after the day-long march over the mountains, were smoking, yarning, or playing cards around the dozen or more campfres. The evening, with a half-grown moon silvering the inverted bowl of Armament which seemed to shut down, lidlike, upon the mountain rim of the high-walled valley, was witchingly enchanting.
 T was saying that the present-day world slant is sanely skeptical-as it should be-" Brouillard went on at the end of the thoughtful pause. Just the same, every man has his little atavis- tic streak, if you can hit upon it. For example, away back in the porringer period, in which we are all like the pin-feathered dickybirds, open-mouth- ed for anything anybody may drop into us someone fed me with the number seven."
 "Succulent morsel!" chuckled Gris- low. Did it agree with you?"
 Brouillard sat back from the fire and clasped his hands over his bent knees. He was of a type rare enough to be noteworthy-a well-knit figure of man, rather under the normal stature, but bulging athletically in the loose-fitting khaki of the engineer, dark of skin, and owning a face which might have served as model for Verge study of fighting franc-tireur
 T don't remember how early in the game the thing began" he resumed, ignoring Grislow's joking interruption, "but away back in the dimmest dawn ings the number seven began to have curious significance for me. Back in the pin-feather time somebody handed me fact about the waste and replace ment that goes on in the human or ganism, bringing around a complete cellular change about once in every seven years. Are you asleep?"
 Not yet; go on," said the hydrog- rapher.
 Up to my seventh birthday was a sickly child, puny and only about half alive. It came-the change, l mean-when I was seven years old That was the year of our removal to Vincennes from the country village where I was born Since that time haven't known what it means to be sick, or even ailing."
 Bully old change!" applauded Gris low. "Is that all?"
 No. What the second period spent on my body it took out of my mind. 1 grew stouter and stronger every year and became more and more the stu oldest blockhead that ever thumbed schoolbook. I was fourteen to day when I squeezed through the final grammar grade; think of it-fourteen years old and still with the woman teachers! I found out afterward that I got my dubiously given passport to the high school chiefly because my father was one of the best-known and best-loved men in the old home town. Perhaps it wasn't the magic seven that built me all over new that summer; perhaps it was only the change in schools and teachers. But from that year on all the hard things were too easy. It was as if somebody or some thing had suddenly opened closed door in my brain and let the daylight into all the dark corners at once"
 Grislow sat up and finished for him.
 Yes: and since that time you have stayed your way through the univer- sity, and butted into the reclamation service. and played skittles with every other mans chances of promotion un- til you have come out at the top of the heap in the construction division, all of which you're much too modest to brag about. But, say; we've skipped one of the seven-year flag sta tions. What happened when you were twenty-one-or were you too busy just then chasing the elusive engineering degree to take notice?"
 Brouillard was staring out over the loom of the dozen campfres-out and across the valley at the massive bulk of Mount Chigringo rising like huge barrier dark to the skyline save fer a single pinprick of yellow light fixing the position of solitary miners cabin half way between the valley level and the summit. When he spoke again the photographer had been given time to shave another pipe charge of tobacco from his pocket plug and to fill and light the brier.
 When was twenty-one my father