The Wolfs Long Howl | Page 5

wild fancy took
hold of George Henry's mind. Out of the wreckage of all his
unprofitable investments one thing remained to him. He was still a
landed proprietor, and he laughed somewhat bitterly at the thought. He
was the owner of a large tract of gaunt poplar forest, sixteen hundred
acres, in a desolate region of Michigan, his possessions stretching along
the shores of the lake. An uncle had bought the land for fifty cents an
acre, and had turned it over to George Henry in settlement of a loan
made in his nephew's more prosperous days. George Henry had paid
the insignificant taxes regularly, and as his troubles thickened had tried
to sell the vaguely valued property at any price, but no one wanted it.
This land, while it would not bring him a meal, was his own at least,
and he reasoned that if he could get to it and build a little cabin upon it,
he could live after a fashion.

The queer thought somehow inspirited him. He would make a
desperate effort. He would get a barrel of pork and a barrel or two of
flour and some potatoes, a gun and an axe; he knew a lake captain, an
old friend, who would readily take him on his schooner on its next trip
and land him on his possessions. But the pork and the flour and the
other necessaries would cost money; how was he to get it? The
difficulty did not discourage him. The plan gave him something
definite to do. He resolved to swallow all pride, and make a last appeal
for a loan from some of those he dreaded to meet again. Surely he
could raise among his friends the small sum he needed, and then he
would go into the woods. Maybe his head and heart would clear there,
and he would some day return to the world like the conventional giant
refreshed with new wine.
It is astonishing how a fixed resolution, however grotesque, helps a
man. The very fact that in his own mind the die was cast brought a new
recklessness to George Henry. He could look at things objectively
again. He slept well for the first time in many weeks.
The next morning, when George Henry awoke, he had abated not one
jot of his resolve nor of his increased courage. The sun seemed brighter
than it had been the day before, and the air had more oxygen to the
cubic foot. He looked at the heap of unopened letters on his
desk--letters he had lacked, for weeks, the moral courage to open--and
laughed at his fear of duns. Let the wolf howl! He would interest
himself in the music. He would be a hero of heroes, and unflinchingly
open his letters, each one a horror in itself to his imagination; but with
all his newly found courage, it required still an effort for George Henry
to approach his desk.
Alone, with set teeth and drooping eyes, George Henry began his task.
It was the old, old story. Bills of long standing, threats of suits, letters
from collecting agencies, red papers, blue, cream and
straw-colored--how he hated them all! Suddenly he came upon a new
letter, a square, thick, well addressed letter of unmistakable
respectability.
"Can it be an invitation?" said George Henry, his heart beating. He

opened the sturdy envelope and read the words it had enclosed. Then he
leaned back, very still, in his chair, with his eyes shut. His heart bled
over what he had suffered. "Had" suffered--yes, that was right, for it
was all a thing of the past. The letter made it clear that he was
comparatively a rich man. That was all.
It was the despised--but not altogether despised, since he had thought
of making it his home--poplar land in Michigan. The poplar supply is
limited, and paper-mills have capacious maws. Prices of raw material
had gone up, and the poplar hunters had found George Henry's land the
most valuable to them in the region. A syndicate offered him one
hundred dollars an acre for the tract.
Joy failed to kill George Henry Harrison. It stunned him somewhat, but
he showed wonderful recuperative powers. As he ate a free-lunch after
a five-cent expenditure that morning, there was something in his air
which would have prevented the most obtuse barkeeper in the world
from commenting upon the quantity consumed. He was not particularly
depressed because his hat was old and his coat gray at the seams and
his shoes cracked. His demeanor when he called upon an attorney, a
former friend, was quite that of an American gentleman perfectly at his
ease.
Within a few days George Henry Harrison had deposited to his credit in
bank the sum of one hundred and sixty thousand