snarled one of the owners of the whisky
threateningly.

"Don't allow no whisky here," snuffed the harelip.

The men were very angry. They advanced toward the cripple, who retreated
with astonishing agility to the lighted room. There he bent the wooden
leg behind him, slipped the end of the brace from beneath the leather
belt, seized the other, peg end in his right hand, and so became
possessed of a murderous bludgeon. This he brandished, hopping at the
same time back and forth in such perfect poise and yet with so ludicrous
an effect of popping corn, that the men were surprised into laughing.

"Bully for you, peg-leg!" they cried.

"Rules 'n regerlations, boys," replied the latter, without, however, a
shade of compromising in his tones. "Had supper?"

On receiving a reply in the affirmative, he caught up the lamp, and,
having resumed his artificial leg in one deft motion, led the way to
narrow little rooms.

Chapter IV

Thorpe was awakened a long time before daylight by the ringing of a
noisy bell. He dressed, shivering, and stumbled down stairs to a round
stove, big as a boiler, into which the cripple dumped huge logs of wood
from time to time. After breakfast Thorpe returned to this stove and sat
half dozing for what seemed to him untold ages. The cold of the north
country was initiating him.

Men came in, smoked a brief pipe, and went out. Shearer was one of them.
The woodsman nodded curtly to the young man, his cordiality quite gone.
Thorpe vaguely wondered why. After a time he himself put on his overcoat
and ventured out into the town. It seemed to Thorpe a meager affair,
built of lumber, mostly unpainted, with always the dark, menacing fringe
of the forest behind. The great saw mill, with its tall stacks and its
row of water-barrels--protection against fire--on top, was the dominant
note. Near the mill crouched a little red-painted structure from whose
stovepipe a column of white smoke rose, attesting the cold, a clear
hundred feet straight upward, and to whose door a number of men were
directing their steps through the snow. Over the door Thorpe could
distinguish the word "Office." He followed and entered.

In a narrow aisle railed off from the main part of the room waited
Thorpe's companions of the night before. The remainder of the office
gave accommodation to three clerks. One of these glanced up inquiringly
as Thorpe came in.

"I am looking for work," said Thorpe.

"Wait there," briefly co