e. Pine Camp was twenty miles deeper in the Wilderness.
It seemed to Nan that she had been traveling through forests, or the
barren stumpage where forests had been, for weeks.

"Here's where we get off, little girl," Uncle Henry said, as he seized
his big bag and her little one and made for the door of the car. Nan
ran after him in her fur clothing. She had found before this that he was
right about the cold. It was an entirely different atmosphere up here in
the Big Woods from Tillbury, or even Chicago.

The train creaked to a stop. They leaped down upon the snowy platform.
Only a plain station, big freight house, and a company of roughly
dressed men to meet them. Behind the station a number of sleighs and
sledges stood, their impatient horses shaking the innumerable bells they
wore.

Nan, stumbling off the car step behind her uncle, came near to colliding
with a small man in patched coat and cowhide boots, and with a rope tied
about his waist as some teamsters affect. He mumbled something in anger
and Nan turned to look at him.

He wore sparse, sandy whiskers, now fast turning gray. The outthrust of
the lower part of his face was as sharp as that of a fox, and he really
looked like a fox. She was sure of his identity before uncle Henry
wheeled and, seeing the man, said:

"What's that you are saying, Ged Raffer? This is my niece, and if you
lay your tongue to her name, I'll give you something to go to law about
in a hurry. Come, Nan. Don't let that man touch so much as your coat
sleeve. He's like pitch. You can't be near him without some of his
meanness sticking to you."

Chapter XI. PINE CAMP AT LAST

It was the first shade upon Uncle Henry's character that displeased
Nan. He was evidently a passionate man, prone to give way to elemental
feelings, literally, "a man of wrath."

Gedney Raffer, weazened, snakelike, sly, and treacherous, had doubtless
wronged Uncle Henry deeply. But this fact could not excuse the huge
lumberman's language on the platform of the Hobart Forks station.

Nan wanted to stop her ears with her fingers and run from the spot.
The tough fellows standing around enjoyed the war of words hugely. Mr.
Sherwood was too big to strike Gedney Raffer, and of course the latter
dared not use his puny fists on the giant.

The blunt club of the lumberman's speech was scarcely a match for the
sharp rapier of Raffer's tongue. As the crowd laughed it was evident
that the fox-faced man was getting the