The two-storied house of Aaron McGivins stood on a hill-side
overlooking a stretch of cleared acreage. It was a dwelling place of
unusual pretentiousness for that land of "Do-without," where inexorable
meagerness is the rule of life. Just now in a room whose hearth was
wide, upon a four-poster bed, lay the master of the place gazing
upwards at the rafters with eyes harassed, yet uncomplaining.

Aaron McGivins had just cause for troubled meditation as he stretched
there under the faded coverlet and under the impending threat of death,
as well. His life had been one of scant ease and of unmitigated
warfare with the hostile forces of Nature. Yet he had built up a
modest competency after a life time of struggle. With a few more years
of industry he might have claimed material victory. In the homely
parlance of his kind he had things "hung-up," which signified such
prosperity had come to him as came to the pioneer woodsmen who faced
the famine times of winter with smoked hams hanging from their nails,
and tobacco and pepper and herbs strung along the ceiling rafters.

Aaron McGivins had not progressed to this modestly enviable estate
without the driving of shrewd bargains and the taking of bold chances.
It followed that men called him hard, though few men called him other
than just. To his door came disputants who preferred his arbitration
on tangled issues to the dubious chances of litigation, for he was also
accounted wise.

His repute among his neighbors was that of a man devoted to peace, but
one upon whom it was unsafe to impose. Those few who had stirred his
slow anger into eruption, had found him one as distinctly to be feared
as trusted.

Had political aspiration been in the pattern of Aaron's thought he
might have gone down to the world below to sit in the state assembly.
From there in due time he might have gained promotion to the augmented
dignities of Congress, but he had persistently waved aside the whispers
of such temptation. "He hain't a wishful feller nohow," the stranger
was always told, "despite thet he knows hist'ry an' sich like lore in
an' out an' back'ards an' forrards."

Now Aaron lay wounded with a pistol ball, and many problems of vital
interest to himself remained unsolved. Whether he would live or die
was guess work--a gamble. Whether the timber which he had felled would
free him from his last debt and leave his two children independent, or
be ravished from him by the insatiable