p round and do the cooking."

Deringham, who could adapt himself to his surroundings, nodded. "That
is what you would consider a soft job in this country?"

"Well," said the man grimly, as he pointed to the deformation of one
lower limb, "I am not fond of it, but it's about all I'm good for now.
That's where the axe went in, and anybody but Harry Alton might have
fired me. It was my own blame foolishness, too, but when the doctor
told him Harry comes to me. 'You needn't worry about one thing,
anyway. There'll be a job for you just so long as you're wanting it,'"
says he.

"He does that kind of thing sometimes?" said Deringham curiously.

"No, sir," said the other dryly. "He does it every time, but the devil
himself wouldn't squeeze ten cents out of Harry if he didn't want to
give it him. But how long are you going to be stripping that fowl?"

"As I'm afraid it would take me all night, I would prefer to give you a
half-a-dollar to do it for me," said Deringham.

The man straightened himself a little, and Deringham received another
surprise.

"Patent medicines and hair-growers are up?" said he.

"I don't quite understand," said Deringham quietly.

"No?" said the other. "Well, you will do presently unless you get
right out of this shanty. I'm fit to make my wages yet, if I've only
got one handy leg, and I can put my mark on any blame peddler who talks
that way to me."

"I'm sorry," said Deringham gravely. "I have, you see, just come from
England, where folks are not always so well paid as you seem to be. I
think I will look for Mr. Alton. Can you tell me where he is?"

The man, who appeared a trifle mollified, pointed to the bush. "He's
yonder, but if he scares you, you needn't blame me," he said.

Deringham picked his way amidst the six-foot fir-stumps girdled with
tall fern, over a breadth of white ashes and charcoal where the
newly-won land lay waiting for the plough, in and out amidst the chaos
of trunks that lay piled athwart each other all round the clearing, and
stopped close by three men who were making an onslaught on a majestic
tree. Its topmost sprays towered two hundred feet above them, and the
great trunk ran a stupendous column to the vault of dusky green above.
It was, however, the men who most attracted Deringham's attention, and
he stood for a moment watching them.

Two were poised on narrow boards notched into the tree a man's height
from the ground, and one was huge and swarth