Scott Burton in the Blue Ridge

The ticking of the old grandfather clock in the neat little New England house was the only sound to break the stillness. So still it was that any one approaching the house could have heard the clock distinctly and would certainly have overlooked the silent figure in the old rocking-chair. But a man was sitting there, nevertheless, completely absorbed in his own thoughts.

An old gentleman appeared in the doorway and stood there for an instant before he saw him. Then his face lighted up.

“Hello, Scott! I thought you had gone out and I wanted to talk to you about your new assignment. Mother tells me that you have your sailing orders now.”

The son looked at him with a smile, but his face still wore a puzzled frown.

“Yes,” he said, “I have my sailing orders, but—”

“Good or bad?” his father interrupted anxiously. “You don’t look overjoyed with them.” The old man was really worried.

“I don’t know just what to think of them,” Scott frowned once more and opened the letter for the hundredth time. “They have assigned me to a timber sales job in the North Carolina mountains.”

“Well, that sounds good enough. They say that is a beautiful country and it is a place I have always wanted to see.”

“Oh, the country is all right,” Scott said brightening, “and I am crazy to go there, only I had my mind set on going back to my old place in the southwest.” And again he frowned. “It is not the country but the job that I am afraid of. Sometimes I am almost sorry that I caught those range thieves out there in Arizona.”

“Why, Scottie boy! If it had not been for that you would never be where you are in the Service to-day,” his father remonstrated proudly.

“Oh, I know that it made me solid with the Forest Service and gave me a chance at a supervisor’s job years before I would ordinarily have had one, but they have been using me as a sort of detective ever since. I was lucky enough to catch those timber thieves in Florida, but I am no sleuth and I’ll fall down on that job sooner or later.”

“But, Scott, I don’t believe this is detective work. I expect they have heard what a tremendous success you made of your own logging job last winter and want you to look after the logging work down there.”

“Yes,” Scott admitted, “I think you are partly right. But why transfer me down there when there are local men who understand those methods? Logging in New Hampshire and logging in North Carolina are very different propositions.”

“Maybe the local men cannot handle it and they know you can,” his father suggested proudly.

“Of course that’s what you think, dad,” Scott said affectionately, “and it may be what they think, but I am afraid that there is something else wrong.”

This rather gloomy conversation was broken up by Mrs. Burton, who had come to the doorway unnoticed. “Well, well, why worry over something you don’t either of you know anything about? Maybe we do not know what you are going to do in North Carolina, but we do know that you have to leave us in the morning and we don’t want to waste what time we have left worrying. Come on in to supper.”

Scott laughed. “All right, mother, you always say the sensible thing. I’ll bet there is nothing wrong with the supper no matter what may be the matter with the new job.”

So they went in to supper cheerfully enough and all three spent the evening poring very busily over the atlas, and trying to see what they could find out about the new country. Caspar, the little town where the headquarters were located, was not shown on the old map, but they found out a great deal about the country in general, and it was bedtime before they knew it.