"Do you know,
Harry, you are a singularly uncommunicative sort of being. I have to
guess that your life is interesting and picturesque,--that is," she
amended, "I should have to do so if Wallace Carpenter had not told me
a little something about it. Sometimes I think you are not nearly poet
enough for the life you are living. Why, you are wonderful, you men
of the north, and you let us ordinary mortals who have not the gift of
divination imagine you entirely occupied with how many pounds of iron
chain you are going to need during the winter." She said these things
lightly as one who speaks things not for serious belief.

"It is something that way," he agreed with a laugh.

"Do you know, sir," she persisted, "that I really don't know anything
at all about the life you lead here? From what I have seen, you might
be perpetually occupied in eating things in a log cabin, and in
disappearing to perform some mysterious rites in the forest." She
looked at him with a smiling mouth but tender eyes, her head tilted back
slightly.

"It's a good deal that way, too," he agreed again. "We use a barrel of
flour in Camp One every two and a half days!"

She shook her head in a faint negation that only half understood what he
was saying, her whole heart in her tender gaze.

"Sit there," she breathed very softly, pointing to the dried needles on
which her feet rested, but without altering the position of her head or
the steadfastness of her look.

He obeyed.

"Now tell me," she breathed, still in the fascinated monotone.

"What?" he inquired.

"Your life; what you do; all about it. You must tell me a story."

Thorpe settled himself more lazily, and laughed with quiet enjoyment.
Never had he felt the expansion of a similar mood. The barrier between
himself and self-expression had faded, leaving not the smallest debris
of the old stubborn feeling.

"The story of the woods," he began, "the story of the saw log. It would
take a bigger man than I to tell it. I doubt if any one man ever would
be big enough. It is a drama, a struggle, a battle. Those men you
hear there are only the skirmishers extending the firing line. We are
fighting always with Time. I'll have to hurry now to get those roads
done and a certain creek cleared before the snow. Then we'll have to
keep on the keen move to finish our cutting before the deep snow; to
haul our logs before the spring thaws; to float them down the river
while the freshet water lasts. When