o sleep with his bunk-mate, and
finally had to lick him, I understand, to shut him up. Challenged the
whole camp, then, to let him alone or take a licking. They let him
alone, Lawson says. G'lang there, you rats!"

Mrs. Field said no more, for the air was whizzing by her ears, and she
hardly dared look out, so keen was the wind; but as soon as they entered
the deeps of the forest it was profoundly still.

The ride that afternoon was a glory she never forgot. Everywhere
yellow-greens and purple shadows. The sun in a burnished blue sky
flooded the forests with light, striking down through even the thickest
pines to lay in fleckings of radiant white and gold upon the snow.

The trail (it was not a road) ran like a graceful furrow over the
hills, around little lakes covered deep with snow, through tamarack
swamps where the tracks of wild things thickened, over ridges of tall
pine clear of brush, and curving everywhere amid stumps, where
dismantled old shanties marked the site of the older logging camps.
Sometimes they met teams going to the store. Sometimes they crossed
logging roads--wide, smooth tracks artificially iced, down which
mountainous loads of logs were slipping, creaking, and groaning.
Sometimes they heard the dry click-clock of the woodsmen's axes or the
crash of falling trees deep in the wood. When they reached the first
camp Ridgeley pulled up the steaming horses at the door and shouted,
"Hello, the camp!"

A tall old man with a long red beard came out. He held one bare red arm
above his eyes. He wore an apron.

"Hello, Sandy!"

"Hello, Mr. Ridgeley!"

"Ready for company?"

"Am always ready for company," he said, with a Scotch accent.

"Well, we're coming in to get warm."

"Vera weel."

As they went in, under the roofed shed between the cook's shanty and the
other and larger shanty, Mrs. Field sniffed. Sandy led them past a large
pyramid composed of the scraps of beef bones, egg-shells, cans, and tea
grounds left over during the winter. In the shed itself hung great slabs
of beef.

It was all as untidy and suggestive of slaughter as the nest of a brood
of eagles.

Sandy was beginning dinner on a huge stove spotted with rust and pancake
batter. All about was the litter of his preparation. Beef--beef on all
sides, and tin dishes and bare benches and huge iron cooking-pans.

Mrs. Field was glad to get out into the sunlight again. "What a horrible
place! Are they all like that?"

"No, my camp