you know there'll have to be a
new system of rations? I've been afraid--now I'm _sure_--the grub won't
last till the ice goes out."

"I know it," said the Colonel very gravely.

"Was there a miscalculation?"

"I hope it was that--or else," speaking still lower, "the stores have
been tampered with, and not by Kaviak either. There'll be a hell of a
row." He looked up, and saw Potts watching them suspiciously. It had
come to this: if two men talked low the others pricked their ears. "But
lack of grub," resumed the Colonel in his usual voice, as though he had
not noticed, "is only one of our difficulties. Lack of work is just
about as bad. It breeds a thousand devils. We're a pack o' fools. Here
we are, all of us, hard hit, some of us pretty well cleaned out o'
ready cash, and here's dollars and dollars all round us, and we sit
over the fire like a lot of God-forsaken natives."

"Dollars! Where?"

"Growin' on the trees, boys; a forest full."

"Oh, timber." Enthusiasm cooled.

"Look at what they say about those fellows up at Anvik, what they made
last year."

"They've got a saw-mill."

"_Now_ they have. But they cut and sold cord-wood to the steamers two
years before they got a mill, and next summer will be the biggest
season yet. We ought to have set to, as soon as the cabins were built,
and cut wood for the summer traffic. But since there are five of us, we
can make a good thing of it yet."

The Colonel finally carried the day. They went at it next morning, and,
as the projector of the work had privately predicted, a better spirit
prevailed in the camp for some time. But here were five men, only one
of whom had had any of the steadying grace of stiff discipline in his
life, men of haphazard education, who had "chucked" more or less easy
berths in a land of many creature comforts ... for this--to fell and
haul birch and fir trees in an Arctic climate on half-rations! It began
to be apparent that the same spirit was invading the forest that had
possession of the camp; two, or at most three, did the work, and the
rest shirked, got snow-blindness and rheumatism, and let the others do
his share, counting securely, nevertheless, on his fifth of the
proceeds, just as he counted (no matter what proportion he had
contributed) on his full share of the common stock of food.

"I came out here a Communist--" said the Boy one day to the Colonel.

"And an agnostic," smiled the older man.

"Oh, I'm an agnostic all right,