behind the swinging door. Fifty trips in a single night had
not been an unusual tally.

To the inmates of the room the boy was known as "Joe" or "Quinn" or
"Sonny." To the man with the half-moon shade over his eyes he was "Say"
or "That Damned Kid." High-strung, high-pressure editors omit the
unnecessary, condensation being part of their creed.

Up in the Franconia Notch, in a little hollow under White Face and
below Bog Eddy, Joe had been known as "Jonathan's boy," Jonathan being
the name his father went by, the last half never being used,--there
being but one "Jonathan"--the one whom everybody loved.

The cabin was still standing, where Joe was born,--a slant of logs with
a stone chimney and some out-buildings; and his old father was still
alive, and so was his mother and his little "Sis." Summer mornings the
smoke would curl straight up from the rude stone chimney, catch a
current of air from the valley, and stretch its blue arms toward the
tall hemlocks covering the slope of the mountain. Winter mornings it
lay flat, buffeted by the winds, hiding itself later on among the
trees. Joe knew these hemlocks,--loved them,--had hugged them many a
time, laying his plump, ruddy cheek against the patches of cool moss
velveting their sides. "Nothin' like trees," his old father had told
him,--"real human when ye know 'em."

To-night, as he lay stretched out on the mail sacks, his ears
unlatched, listening for the sound of the night city editor's bell, or
his gruff "Say, you!" his mind kept reverting to their bigness and
wide, all embracing, protecting arms. A letter from Jonathan received
that morning, and still tucked away in his inside pocket, had revived
these memories.

"They've started to cut roads, son," it read. "I was out gummin'
yesterday and got up under White Face. Won't be nothing left if they
keep on. Cy Hawkins sold his timber land to them last winter and
they've histed up a biler on wheels and a succular saw, and hev cleared
off purty nigh every tree clean from the big windslash down to the East
Branch. It ain't going into building stuff; they're sending it down to
Plymouth to a pulp mill and grinding it up to print newspapers on, so
the head man told me. Guess you know all about it, but it was news to
me. I told him it was a gol-darn-shame to serve a tree so, being as how
trees had feelings same as men, but he laughed and said it warn't none
of my bizness, and I guess it ain't. Beats all what some folks wil