timents, nary bit. I was just
naturally savin' him for the birling match next Fourther July."

II

THE FOREMAN

A man is one thing: a man _plus_ his work is another, entirely
different. You can learn this anywhere, but in the lumber woods best of
all.

Especially is it true of the camp boss, the foreman. A firm that knows
its business knows this, and so never considers merely what sort of a
character a candidate may bear in town. He may drink or abstain, may
exhibit bravery or cowardice, strength or weakness--it is all one to the
lumbermen who employ him. In the woods his quality must appear.

So often the man most efficient and trusted in the especial environment
of his work is the most disreputable outside it. The mere dignifying
quality of labour raises his value to the _nth_ power. In it he
discovers the self-respect which, in one form or another, is absolutely
necessary to the man who counts. His resolution to succeed has back of
it this necessity of self-respect, and so is invincible. A good boss
gives back before nothing which will further his job.

Most people in the North Country understand this double standard; but
occasionally someone, either stupid or inexperienced or unobservant,
makes the mistake of concluding that the town-character and the
woods-character are necessarily the same. If he acts in accordance with
that erroneous idea, he gets into trouble. Take the case of Silver Jack
and the walking boss of Morrison & Daly, for instance. Silver Jack
imagined his first encounter with Richard Darrell in Bay City indicated
the certainty of like results to his second encounter with that
individual in Camp Thirty. His mistake was costly; but almost anybody
could have told him better. To understand the case, you must first meet
Richard Darrell.

The latter was a man about five feet six inches in height, slenderly
built, yet with broad, hanging shoulders. His face was an exact
triangle, beginning with a mop of red-brown hair, and ending with a
pointed chin. Two level quadrilaterals served him as eyebrows, beneath
which a strong hooked nose separated his round, brown, chipmunk's eyes.
When he walked, he threw his heavy shoulders slightly forward. This, in
turn, projected his eager, nervous countenance. The fact that he was
accustomed to hold his hands half open, with the palms square to the
rear, lent him a peculiarly ready and truculent air. His name, as has
been said, was Richard Darrell; but men