, support a family.

One Sunday night he was tracked to a hollow about a mile from camp,
where he was met by a gaunt, wild, eccentric-looking girl, who was
clearly his daughter. The two proceeded to an old stump concealed under
some logs in a thicket, and out of the hollow, of the stump Gillsey
fished a lump of salt pork, together with a big bundle of "hard-tack,"
and a parcel or two of some other kind of provender.

The girl threw herself upon the food like a famishing animal, devoured
huge mouthfuls, and then, gathering all promiscuously into her scanty
skirt, darted off alone through the gloom. As soon as she had
disappeared with her stores, Gillsey was captured and dragged back to
camp.

At first he was too helpless with terror to open his mouth; but when
formally arraigned before the boss he found his tongue. He implored
forgiveness in the most piteous tones, while at the same time he flatly
denied every charge. He even declared he was not married, that he had no
family, and that he knew no one at all in the Gornish district or that
part of the province.

But the boss knew all about him, even to his parentage. He lived about
ten miles from the camp, across the mountains, on the Gornish River
itself. As for his guilt, there was no room for a shadow of uncertainty.

A misdemeanor of this sort is always severely handled in the lumber
camps. But every man, from the boss down, was filled with profound
compassion for Gillsey's family. A family so afflicted as to own Gillsey
for husband and sire appeared to them deserving of the tenderest pity.

It was the pathetic savagery and haggardness of the young girl that had
moved the woodmen to let her off with her booty; and now, the boss
declared, if Gillsey were dismissed without his wages--as was customary,
in addition to other punishment--the family would surely starve, cut off
from the camp pork-barrel. It was decided to give the culprit his wages
up to date. Then came the rough-and-ready sentence of the
camp-followers. The prisoner was to be "dragged"--the most humiliating
punishment on the woodmen's code.

Gillsey's tears of fright were of no avail. He was wrapped in a sort of
winding-sheet of canvas, smeared from head to foot with grease to make
him slip smoothly, and hitched by the fettered wrists to a pair of
horses. The strange team was then driven, at a moderate pace, for about
half a mile along the main wood-road, the whole camp following in
procession, and