It occurred to Laura that he did not look as if there was very much
the matter with him, and she stood still a minute considering. As
Gordon had said, it was she who managed the ranch, and she recognized
that it was desirable that the trees in question should be dragged out
of the soft ground while the frost lasted. Still, there was the baking
and washing, and it would be late at night before she could accomplish
half she wished to do, if she undertook the task in question. While
she thought over it her father spoke again.

"I wish you would sit down," he said. "I feel I must have quietness,
and your restless habits jar upon me horribly."

That decided her, and slipping into her own room, she put on an old
blanket coat, and went out quietly. She walked through the orchard to
the little log stable where the working oxen stood, and, after patting
the patient beasts, shackled a heavy chain to the yoke she laid upon
their brawny necks. Then, picking up a handspike, she led them out,
and for an hour walked beside them, tapping them with a long pointed
stick, while they dragged the big logs out of the swamp. Now and then
it taxed all her strength to lift the thinner end of a log on the
chain-sling with a handspike, but she contrived to do it until at
length one heavier than the others proved too much for her. She could
hear the ringing of the hired man's axe across the clearing, but there
was a great deal for him to do, and, taking up the handspike again,
she strained at it.

She heard footsteps behind her, and she straightened herself suddenly.
She turned and saw Gordon watching her with a curious smile. Tall and
straight and supple, with a ruddy, half-guilty glow on her face, she
stood near the middle of the little gap in the Bush, the big dappled
oxen close at her side. The wintry sunlight, which struck upon her,
tinted the old blanket dress a shining ochre, and the loose tress of
red-gold hair, which had escaped from beneath her little fur cap,
struck a dominant tone of glowing colour among the pale reds and
russets of the fir-trunks and withered fern.

Gordon shook his head reproachfully. "Sit down a minute or two, and
I'll heave that log on to the sling," he said. "This is not the kind
of thing you ought to be doing."

Laura, who was glad of the excuse, sat down on one of the logs, while
the man leaned against a fir and gravely regarded her.

"The work must be done by somebody, and my father is apparently not
ve