ox, neither more nor less,
fourteen by fourteen feet of bare board wall, unpainted and unpapered.
There was an iron bed, a willow rocker, and a rude closet for clothes in
one corner. A duplicate of the department-store bargain rug in the other
room lay on the floor. On an upturned box stood an enamel pitcher and a
tin washbasin. That was all.

She sat down on the bed and viewed it forlornly. A wave of sickening
rebellion against everything swept over her. To herself she seemed as
irrevocably alone as if she had been lost in the depths of the dark
timber that rose on every hand. And sitting there she heard at length
the voices of men. Looking out through a window curtained with
cheesecloth she saw her brother's logging gang swing past, stout
woodsmen all, big men, tall men, short-bodied men with thick necks and
shoulders, sunburned, all grimy with the sweat of their labors,
carrying themselves with a free and reckless swing, the doubles in type
of that roistering crew she had seen embark on Jack Fyfe's boat.

In so far as she had taken note of those who labored with their hands in
the region of her birth, she had seen few like these. The chauffeur, the
footman, the street cleaner, the factory workers--they were all
different. They lacked something,--perhaps nothing in the way of
physical excellence; but these men betrayed in every movement a subtle
difference that she could not define. Her nearest approximation and the
first attempt she made at analysis was that they looked like pirates.
They were bold men and strong; that was written in their faces and the
swing of them as they walked. And they served the very excellent purpose
of taking her mind off herself for the time being.

She watched them cluster by a bench before the cookhouse, dabble their
faces and hands in washbasins, scrub themselves promiscuously on towels,
sometimes one at each end of a single piece of cloth, hauling it back
and forth in rude play.

All about that cookhouse dooryard spread a confusion of empty tin cans,
gaudily labeled, containers of corn and peas and tomatoes. Dishwater and
refuse, chips, scraps, all the refuse of the camp was scattered there in
unlovely array.

But that made no more than a passing impression upon her. She was
thinking, as she removed her hat and gloves, of what queer angles come
now and then to the human mind. She wondered why she should be
sufficiently interested in her brother's hired men to drive off a
compellin