; I've enjoyed myself," said Bob,
mounting.

Thorne laid his hand on the young man's knee.

"I wish we could induce you old-timers to come to our way of thinking,"
said he pleasantly.

"How's that?" asked Bob.

"Your slash is in horrible shape."

"Our slash!" repeated Bob in a surprised tone. "How?"

"It's a regular fire-trap, the way you leave it tangled up. It wouldn't
cost you much to pile the tops and leave the ground in good shape."

"Why, it's just like any other slash!" protested Bob. "We're logging
just as everybody always logs!"

"That's just what I object to. And when you fell a tree or pull a log to
the skids, I do wish we could induce you to pay a little attention to
the young growth. It's a little more trouble, sometimes, to go around
instead of through, but it's worth it to the forest."

Bob's brows were bent on the Supervisor in puzzled surprise. Thorne
laughed, and slapped the young man's horse on the flanks to start him.

"You think it over!" he called.

A half-hour's ride took Bob to the clearing where the logging crews had
worked the year before. Here, although the hour was now late, he reined
in his horse and looked. It was the first time he had ever really done
so. Heretofore a slashing had been as much a part of the ordinary
woodland landscape as the forest itself.

He saw then the abattis of splintered old trunks, of lopped limbs, and
entangled branches, piled up like jackstraws to the height of even six
or eight feet from the ground; the unsightly mat of sodden old masses of
pine needles and cedar fans; the hundreds of young saplings bent double
by the weight of debris, broken square off, or twisted out of all chance
of becoming straight trees in their age; the long, deep, ruthless
furrows where the logs had been dragged through everything that could
stand in their way; the few trees left standing, weak specimens,
undesirable species, the culls of the forest, further scarred where the
cruel steel cables had rasped or bitten them. He knew by experience the
difficulty of making a way, even afoot, through this tangle. Now, under
the influence of Thorne's suggestion, he saw them as great piles of so
much fuel, laid as though by purpose for the time when the evil genius
of the forest should desire to warm himself.

II

Bob was finally late for supper, which he ate hastily and without much
appetite. After finishing the meal, he hunted up Welton. He found the
lumberman tilted b