hat the blank, blank, do these logs mean, Murphy?" he demanded,
without pause for salutation.

"Tis a foine avenin' Misther Macdonald," said Murphy, blandly offering
his hand, "an' Hiven bliss ye."

Macdonald checked himself with an effort and reluctantly shook hands
with Murphy and LeNoir, whom he slightly knew. "It is a fery goot
evening, indeed," he said, in as quiet a voice as he could command, "but
I am inquiring about these logs."

"Shure, an' it is a dhry night, and onpolite to kape yez talking here.
Come in wid yez," and much against his will Black Hugh followed Murphy
to the tavern, the most pretentious of a group of log buildings--once
a lumber camp--which stood back a little distance from the river, and
about which Murphy's men, some sixty of them, were now camped.

The tavern was full of Murphy's gang, a motley crew, mostly French
Canadians and Irish, just out of the woods and ready for any devilment
that promised excitement. Most of them knew by sight, and all by
reputation, Macdonald and his gang, for from the farthest reaches of the
Ottawa down the St. Lawrence to Quebec the Macdonald gang of Glengarry
men was famous. They came, most of them, from that strip of country
running back from the St. Lawrence through Glengarry County, known as
the Indian Lands--once an Indian reservation. They were sons of the men
who had come from the highlands and islands of Scotland in the early
years of the last century. Driven from homes in the land of their
fathers, they had set themselves with indomitable faith and courage to
hew from the solid forest, homes for themselves and their children that
none might take from them. These pioneers were bound together by ties of
blood, but also by bonds stronger than those of blood. Their loneliness,
their triumphs, their sorrows, born of their common life-long conflict
with the forest and its fierce beasts, knit them in bonds close and
enduring. The sons born to them and reared in the heart of the pine
forests grew up to witness that heroic struggle with stern nature and to
take their part in it. And mighty men they were. Their life bred in
them hardiness of frame, alertness of sense, readiness of resource,
endurance, superb self-reliance, a courage that grew with peril, and
withal a certain wildness which at times deepened into ferocity. By
their fathers the forest was dreaded and hated, but the sons, with
rifles in hand, trod its pathless stretches without fear, and with thei