now and for ever. But this winter has
cured my faith in Communism."

Early February brought not only lengthening daylight, but a radical
change in the weather. The woodsmen worked in their shirt-sleeves,
perspired freely, and said in the innocence of their hearts, "If winter
comes early up here, spring does the same." The whole hillside was one
slush, and the snow melting on the ill-made Little Cabin roof brought a
shower-bath into the upper bunk.

Few things in nature so surely stir the pulse of man as the untimely
coming of a few spring days, that have lost their way in the calendar,
and wandered into winter. No trouble now to get the Big Chimney men
away from the fireside. They held up their bloodless faces in the faint
sunshine, and their eyes, with the pupils enlarged by the long reign of
night, blinked feebly, like an owl's forced to face the morning.

There were none of those signs in the animal world outside, of
premature stir and cheerful awaking, that in other lands help the
illusion that winter lies behind, but there was that even more
stimulating sweet air abroad, that subtle mixture of sun and yielding
frost, that softened wind that comes blowing across the snow, still
keen to the cheek, but subtly reviving to the sensitive nostril, and
caressing to the eyes. The Big Chimney men drew deep breaths, and said
in their hearts the battle was over and won.

Kaviak, for ever following at Mac's heels "like a rale Irish tarrier,"
found his allegiance waver in these stirring, blissful days, if ever
Farva so belied character and custom as to swing an axe for any length
of time. Plainly out of patience, Kaviak would throw off the musk-rat
coat, and run about in wet mucklucks and a single garment--uphill,
downhill, on important errands which he confided to no man.

It is part of the sorcery of such days that men's thoughts, like
birds', turn to other places, impatient of the haven that gave them
shelter in rough weather overpast. The Big Chimney men leaned on their
axes and looked north, south, east, west.

Then the Colonel would give a little start, turn about, lift his
double-bitter, and swing it frontier fashion, first over one shoulder,
then over the other, striking cleanly home each time, working with a
kind of splendid rhythm more harmonious, more beautiful to look at,
than most of the works of men. This was, perhaps, the view of his
comrades, for they did a good deal of looking at the Colonel. He said
he w