lackening
current, the logs floated by free, cannoning with hollow sound one
against the other. A half-dozen watchers, leaning statuesquely on the
shafts of their peavies, watched the ordered ranks pass by.

One by one the spectators departed. At last only myself and the
brown-faced young man remained. He sat on a stump, staring with
sightless eyes into vacancy. I did not disturb his thoughts.

The sun dipped. A cool breeze of evening sucked up the river. Over near
the cook-camp a big fire commenced to crackle by the drying frames. At
dusk the rivermen straggled in from the down-river trail.

The brown-faced young man arose and went to meet them. I saw him return
in close conversation with Jimmy Powers. Before they reached us he had
turned away with a gesture of farewell.

Jimmy Powers stood looking after him long after his form had
disappeared, and indeed even after the sound of his wheels had died
toward town. As I approached, the riverman turned to me a face from
which the reckless, contained self-reliance of the woods-worker had
faded. It was wide-eyed with an almost awe-stricken wonder and
adoration.

"Do you know who that is?" he asked me in a hushed voice. "That's
Thorpe, Harry Thorpe. And do you know what he said to me just now, _me_?
He told me he wanted me to work in Camp One next winter, Thorpe's One.
And he told me I was the first man he ever hired straight into One."

His breath caught with something like a sob.

I had heard of the man and of his methods. I knew he had made it a
practice of recruiting for his prize camp only from the employees of his
other camps, that, as Jimmy said, he never "hired straight into One." I
had heard, too, of his reputation among his own and other woodsmen. But
this was the first time I had ever come into personal contact with his
influence. It impressed me the more in that I had come to know Jimmy
Powers and his kind.

"You deserve it, every bit," said I. "I'm not going to call you a hero,
because that would make you tired. What you did this afternoon showed
nerve. It was a brave act. But it was a better act because you rescued
your enemy, because you forgot everything but your common humanity when
danger----"

I broke off. Jimmy was again looking at me with his ironically quizzical
grin.

"Bub," said he, "if you're going to hang any stars of Bethlehem on my
Christmas tree, just call a halt right here. I didn't rescue that
scalawag because I had any Christian sen