them as she did.

Maggie, in the midst as it were of a revelation, leaned back and
wondered at it all. She, too, was thinking of Paul, the owner of these
boundless forests. She understood him better now. This drive had
revealed to her a part of his nature which had rather puzzled her--a
large, simple, quiet strength which had developed and grown to maturity
beneath these trees. We are all part of what we have seen. We all carry
with us through life somewhat of the scenes through which we passed in
childhood.

Maggie knew now where Paul had learnt the quiet concentration of mind,
the absorption in his own affairs, the complete lack of interest in the
business of his neighbor which made him different from other men. He had
learnt these things at first hand from God's creatures. These
forest-dwellers of fur and feather went about their affairs in the same
absorbed way, with the same complete faith, the same desire to leave and
be left alone. The simplicity of Nature was his. His only craft was
forest craft.

"Now you know," said Catrina, when they reached the hut, "why I hate
Petersburg."

Maggie nodded. The effect of the forest was still upon her. She did not
want to talk.

The woman who received them, the wife of a keeper, had prepared in a
rough way for their reception. She had a large fire and bowls of warm
milk. The doors and windows had been thrown wide open by Paul's orders.
He wanted to spare Maggie too intimate an acquaintance with a Russian
interior. The hut was really a shooting-box built by Paul some years
earlier, and inhabited by a head-keeper, one learned in the ways of bear
and wolf and lynx. The large dwelling-room had been carefully scrubbed.
There was a smell of pine-wood and soap. The table, ready spread with a
simple luncheon, took up nearly the whole of the room.

While the two girls were warming themselves, a keeper came to the door
of the hut and asked to see Catrina. He stood in the little door-way,
completely filling it, and explained that he could not come in, as the
buckles and straps of his snow-shoes were clogged and frozen. He wore
the long Norwegian snow-shoes, and was held to be the quickest runner in
the country.

Catrina had a long conversation with the man, who stood hatless, ruddy,
and shy.

"It is," she then explained to Maggie, "Paul's own man, who always loads
for him and carries his spare gun. He has sent him to tell us that the
game has been ringed, and that the beaters