mmanded the clerk.

In a few moments the door of the inner room opened, and Shearer came
out. A man's head peered from within.

"Come on, boys," said he.

The five applicants shuffled through. Thorpe found himself in the
presence of a man whom he felt to be the natural leader of these wild,
independent spirits. He was already a little past middle life, and his
form had lost the elastic vigor of youth. But his eye was keen, clear,
and wrinkled to a certain dry facetiousness; and his figure was of that
bulk which gives an impression of a subtler weight and power than the
merely physical. This peculiarity impresses us in the portraits of such
men as Daniel Webster and others of the old jurists. The manner of
the man was easy, good-natured, perhaps a little facetious, but
these qualities were worn rather as garments than exhibited as
characteristics. He could afford them, not because he had fewer
difficulties to overcome or battles to fight than another, but because
his strength was so sufficient to them that mere battles or difficulties
could not affect the deliberateness of his humor. You felt his
superiority even when he was most comradely with you. This man Thorpe
was to meet under other conditions, wherein the steel hand would more
plainly clink the metal.

He was now seated in a worn office chair before a littered desk. In
the close air hung the smell of stale cigars and the clear fragrance of
pine.

"What is it, Dennis?" he asked the first of the men.

"I've been out," replied the lumberman. "Have you got anything for me,
Mr. Daly?"

The mill-owner laughed.

"I guess so. Report to Shearer. Did you vote for the right man, Denny?"

The lumberman grinned sheepishly. "I don't know, sir. I didn't get that
far."

"Better let it alone. I suppose you and Bill want to come back, too?" he
added, turning to the next two in the line. "All right, report to Tim.
Do you want work?" he inquired of the last of the quartette, a big
bashful man with the shoulders of a Hercules.

"Yes, sir," answered the latter uncomfortably.

"What do you do?"

"I'm a cant-hook man, sir."

"Where have you worked?"

"I had a job with Morgan & Stebbins on the Clear River last winter."

"All right, we need cant-hook men. Report at 'seven,' and if they don't
want you there, go to 'thirteen.'"

Daly looked directly at the man with an air of finality. The lumberman
still lingered uneasily, twisting his cap in his hands.

"Anything yo