iron forks, the tin plates, and the small tin basins (for
tea) which made up the dinner set. Basins of brown sugar stood about.

"Good gracious! Do people still eat brown sugar? Why, I haven't seen any
of that for ages," cried Mrs. Field.

The stew was good and savory, and the bread fair. The tea was not all
clover, but it tasted of the tin. Mrs. Field said:

"Beef, beef, everywhere beef. One might suppose a menagerie of desert
animals ate here. Edward, we must make things more comfortable for our
men. They must have cups to drink out of; these basins are horrible."

It was humorous to the men, this housewifely suggestion.

"Oh, make it napkins, Allie!"

"You can laugh, but I sh'an't rest after seeing this. If you thought I
was going to say, 'Oh, how picturesque!' you're mistaken. I think it's
barbarous."

She was getting impatient of their patronizing laughter, as if she were
a child. They changed their manner to one of acquiescence, but thought
of her as a child just the same.

After dinner they all went out to see the crew working. It was the
biggest crew anywhere in the neighborhood, and they sat a long while and
watched the men at work. Ridgeley got out and hitched the team to a
tree, and took Field up to the skidway. Mrs. Field remained in the
sleigh, however.

Near her "the swamping team," a span of big deep-red oxen, came and went
among the green tops of the fallen pines. They crawled along their
trails in the snow like some strange machinery, and the boy in a blue
jacket moved almost as listlessly. Somewhere in the tangle of refuse
boughs the swampers' axes click-clocked, saws uttered their grating,
rhythmic snarl, and great trees at intervals shivered, groaned, and fell
with soft, rushing, cracking sweeps into the deep snow, and the swampers
swarmed upon them like Lilliputians attacking a giant enemy.

There was something splendid (though tragic) in the work, but the
thought of the homelessness of the men, their terrible beds, and their
long hours of toil oppressed the delicate and refined woman. She began
to take on culpability. She was partly in authority now, and this system
must be changed. She was deep in plans for change, in shanties and in
sleeping places, when the men returned.

Ridgeley was saying: "No, we control about thirty thousand acres of pine
as good as that. It ain't what it was twenty years ago, but it's worth
money, after all."

It was getting near to dark as they reached No. 6