again, and Ridgeley
drew up and helped them out and into the cook's shanty.

Mrs. Field was introduced to the cook, a short, rather sullen, but
intelligent man. He stood over the red-hot stove, laying great slices of
beef in a huge dripping-pan. He had a taffler or assistant in the person
of a half-grown boy, at whom he jerked rough orders like hunks of stove
wood. Some hit the boy and produced noticeable effects, others did not.

Meanwhile a triumphant sunset was making the west one splendor of purple
and orange and crimson, which came over the cool green rim of the pines
like the Valhalla March in Wagner.

Mrs. Field sat there in the dim room by the window, seeing that splendor
flush and fade, and thinking how dangerous it was to ask where one's
wealth comes from in the world. Outside, the voices of the men
thickened; they were dropping in by twos and fours, with teams and on
foot.

The assistant arranged the basins in rows, and put one of the iron forks
and knives on each side of each plate, and filled the sugar-basins and
dumped in the cold beans, and split the bread into slabs, and put small
pots of tea here and there ready for the hands of the men.

At last, when the big pans of toast, the big plates of beef, were placed
steaming on the table, the cook called Field and Ridgeley and said:

"Set right here at the end." He raised his arm to a ring which dangled
on a wire. "Now look out; you'll see 'em come sidewise." He jerked the
ring and disappeared into the kitchen.

There came shouts, trampling, laughter, and the door burst open and they
streamed in--Norwegians, French, half-breeds, dark-skinned fellows all
of them save the Norwegians. They came like a flood, but they fell
silent at sight of a woman, so beautiful and strange to them.

All words ceased. They sank into place beside the table with the thump
of falling sandbags. They were all in their shirt sleeves, but they were
cleanly washed, and the most of them had combed their hair; but they
seemed very wild and hairy to Mrs. Field. She looked at her husband and
Ridgeley with a grateful pleasure; it was so restful to have them on
each side of her.

The men ate like hungry dogs. They gorged in silence. Nothing was heard
but the clank of knives on tin plates, the drop of heavy plates of food,
and the occasional muttered words of some one asking for the bread and
the gravy.

As they ate they furtively looked with great curiosity and admiration
up at t