Dad might have starved your father out of these woods,
but the trouble was that old Mac would always come and promise reform
and end up by borrowing a couple of hundred dollars, and then Dad had
to hire him again to get it back! Of course the matter simmers down
to this: Dad is so fond of your father that he just hasn't got the
moral courage to work him over--and now that job is up to me. Moira,
I'm not going to beat about the bush with you. They tell me your
father is a hopeless inebriate."
"I'm afraid he is, Mr. Bryce."
"How long has he been drinking to excess?"
"About ten years, I think. Of course, he would always take a few
drinks with the men around pay-day, but after Mother died, he began
taking his drinks between pay-days. Then he took to going down to
Sequoia on Saturday nights and coming back on the mad-train, the
maddest of the lot. I suppose he was lonely, too. He didn't get real
bad, however, till about two years ago."
"Just about the time my father's eyes began to fail him and he ceased
coming up into the woods to jack Mac up? So he let the brakes go and
started to coast, and now he's reached the bottom! I couldn't get him
on the telephone to-day or yesterday. I suppose he was down in
Arcata, liquoring up."
She nodded miserably.
"Well, we have to get logs to the mill, and we can't get them with
old John Barleycorn for a woods-boss, Moira.
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