Free trader-journal. (Ottawa, Ill.) 1916-1920, 1917-09-26

Stella learns that Monahan is plot
ting TO hurt Fyfe's lumber business by
by underhand means. Her baby dies
by an accident.
So she gained in those weeks some
thing of her old poise. Inevitably she
was very lonely at times. but she
fought against that with the most eff
fective weapon she knew incessant
activity. She was always busy. There
was a rented piano now sitting in the
opposite corner from the gas stove on
which she cooked her meals. Howard
kept his word She ''kullcd business"
and he raised her to forty week and
offered her contract, which she re-
fused because other avenues, bigger
and better than singing IN a motion
picture house, were tentatively open
ing.
December WAS waning when she
came to Seattle. In the following
weeks her only contact with the past,
beyond the mill of her own thoughts,
was an item I'm the Seattle Times
touching upon certain litigation in
which Fyfe was involved Briefly,
Monohan. under the firm name of the
tbbey- Aionohan Timber company. was
suing Fyfe for heavy damages for the
loss of certain booms Of logs blown
up and set adrift at the mouth Of the
Tyce river. There was appended an
account Of the clash over the closed
channel and the killing of Billy Dale.
No one Lad been brought to book for
that yet. Any one of sixty men might
have fired the shot.
1t made Stella vince, for it took her
back to that dreadful day. She could
not bear TO think that Billy Dale's
blood lay ON her and Monohan., neither
could she Stilie an uneasy apprehcn-
sion that something more grievous vet
might happen on Roaring lake. But at
least she had done what she could. If
she were the flame, she had removed
herself from the powder magazine
Fyfc had pulled his cedar crew off the
Tyee before she left. If aggression
came 1t must come from one direction
CHAPTER XIV.
A Lost Illusion.
(NsELLA had not minced matters
y with herself when she left Roar
ing lake. Dazed and shaken by
suffering, nevertheless she knew that
she would not always suffer; that in
time she would get back to that nor
NAL state in which the human ego dill
gently pnrsues happiness. In time the
legal tie between herself and Jack Fyfe
would cease to exist. If Monohan cared
for her as she thought he cared a year
or two more or less mattered little.
They had oil their lives before them.
In the long run the errors and mistakes
of that upheaval would grow dim, be
as nothing. Jack Fyfe would shrug
his shoulders and forget, ana in due
time he would find q filter mate. one
as loyal as he deserved. And why
might not she, who had never loved
him, whose marriage to him had been
only climbing out Of the fire into the
frying pan?
So that with all her determination to
make the most of her gift of song, so
that she would never again be buffeted
by material urgencies in material
world, Stella had nevertheless been
listening with the eur Of her mind, so
to speak, for word from Monohan to
say that he understood and that all
was well.
parudoxically, she had not expected
to hear that word. Once In Seattle,
away from 1t all there slowly grew
upon her the conviction that in Mono
hans fine avowal and Remuneration he
had only followed the cue she had
given. In oil else he had played his
own hand. She couldn't forget Billy
Dale. II the motive behind that bloody
elimination were thwartcd love it was
thing to shrink from. 1t seemed to
her now, forcing herself to reason with
cold blooded logic, that Monoan de-
sired her less than he hated Fyfes pos.
session Of her; that she was merely an
added factor IN the breaking out of Il
struggle for mastery between two di.
verse and dominant men. Every sign
and token went to show that the pot