nd
was a table-sink, and tin wash-basins, and roller towels. The men were
splashing and blowing in the plunge-in-all-over fashion of their class.
They emerged slicked down and fresh, their hair plastered wet to their
foreheads. After a moment a fat and motherly woman made an announcement
from a rear room. All trooped out.

The dining room was precisely like those Bob remembered from
recollections of the river camps of his childhood. There were the same
long tables covered with red oilcloth, the same pine benches worn smooth
and shiny, the same thick crockery, and the same huge receptacles
steaming with hearty--and well-cooked--food. Nowhere does the man who
labours with his hands fare better than in the average lumber camp.
Forest operations have a largeness in conception and execution that
leads away from the habit of the mean, small and foolish economics. At
one side, and near the windows, stood a smaller table. The covering of
this was turkey-red cloth with white pattern; it boasted a white-metal
"caster"; and possessed real chairs. Here Bob took his seat, in company
with Fox, Collins, Mason, Tally and the half-dozen active young fellows
he had seen handling the scaling rules near the ships.

At the men's tables the meal was consumed in a silence which Bob
learned later came nearer being obligatory than a matter of choice.
Conversation was discouraged by the good-natured fat woman, Mrs.
Hallowell. Talk delayed; and when one had dishes to wash----

The "boss's table" was more leisurely. Bob was introduced to the
sealers. They proved to be, with one exception, young fellows of
twenty-one or two, keen-eyed, brown-faced, alert and active. They
impressed Bob as belonging to the clerk class, with something added by
the outdoor, varied life. Indeed, later he discovered them to be sons of
carpenters, mechanics and other higher-class, intelligent workingmen;
boys who had gone through high school, and perhaps a little way into the
business college; ambitious youngsters, each with a different idea in
the back of his head. They had in common an air of capability, of
complete adequacy for the task in life they had selected. The sixth
sealer was much older and of the riverman type. He had evidently come up
from the ranks.

There was no general conversation. Talk confined itself strictly to
shop. Bob, his imagination already stirred by the incidents of his
stroll, listened eagerly. Fox was getting in touch with the whole
situa