emn forest. And this brings us
to FitzPatrick.

FitzPatrick was a tall, slow man, with a face built square. The lines of
his brows, his mouth, and his jaw ran straight across; those of his
temples, cheeks, and nose straight up and down. His eye was very quiet
and his speech rare. When he did talk, it was with deliberation. For
days, sometimes, he would ejaculate nothing but monosyllables, looking
steadily on the things about him.

He had walked in ahead of the tote-team late one evening in the autumn,
after the Rough Red and his devils had been at work a fortnight. The
camp consisted quite simply of three buildings, which might have been
identified as a cook-camp, a sleeping-camp, and a stable. FitzPatrick
entered the sleeping-camp, stood his slender scaling-rule in the corner,
and peered about him through the dusk of a single lamp.

He saw a round stove in the centre, a littered and dirty floor, bunks
filled with horrible straw and worse blankets jumbled here and there,
old and dirty clothes drying fetidly. He saw an unkempt row of
hard-faced men along the deacon-seat, reckless in bearing, with the
light of the dare-devil in their eyes.

"Where is the boss?" asked FitzPatrick, steadily.

The Rough Red lurched his huge form toward the intruder.

"I am your scaler," explained the latter. "Where is the office?"

"You can have the bunk beyand," indicated the Rough Red, surlily.

"You have no office then?"

"What's good enough fer th' men is good enough for a boss; and what's
good enough fer th' boss is good enough fer any blank blanked scaler."

"It is not good enough for this one," replied FitzPatrick, calmly. "I
have no notion of sleepin' and workin' in no such noise an' dirt. I need
an office to keep me books and th' van. Not a log do I scale for ye,
Jimmy Bourke, till you give me a fit place to tally in."

And so it came about, though the struggle lasted three days. The Rough
Red stormed restlessly between the woods and the camp, delivering
tremendous broadsides of oaths and threats. FitzPatrick sat absolutely
imperturbable on the deacon-seat, looking straight in front of him, his
legs stretched comfortably aslant, one hand supporting the elbow of the
other, which in turn held his short brier pipe.

"Good-mornin' to ye, Jimmy Bourke," said he each morning, and after that
uttered no word until the evening, when it was, "Good-night to ye,
Jimmy Bourke," with a final _rap, rap, rap_ of his pipe.

The cook,