He had walked in ahead of the tote-team late one evening in the autumn, after the Rough Red and his devils had been at work a fortnight. The camp consisted quite simply of three buildings, which might have been identified as a cook-camp, a sleeping-camp, and a stable. FitzPatrick entered the sleeping-camp, stood his slender scaling-rule in the corner, and peered about him through the dusk of a single lamp. He saw a round stove in the centre, a littered and dirty floor, bunks filled with horrible straw and worse blankets jumbled here and there, old and dirty clothes drying fetidly. He saw an unkempt row of hard-faced men along the deacon-seat, reckless in bearing, with the light of the dare-devil in their eyes. "Where is the boss?" asked FitzPatrick, steadily. The Rough Red lurched his huge form toward the intruder. "I am your scaler," explained the latter. "Where is the office?" "You can have the bunk beyand," indicated the Rough Red, surlily. "You have no office then?" "What's good enough fer th' men is good enough for a boss; and what's good enough fer th' boss is good enough fer any blank blanked scaler." "It is not good enough for this one," replied FitzPatrick, calmly. "I have no notion of sleepin' and workin' in no such noise an' dirt. I need an office to keep me books and th' van. Not a log do I scale for ye, Jimmy Bourke, till you give me a fit place to tally in." And so it came about, though the struggle lasted three days. The Rough Red stormed restlessly between the woods and the camp, delivering tremendous broadsides of oaths and threats. FitzPatrick sat absolutely imperturbable on the deacon-seat, looking straight in front of him, his legs stretched comfortably aslant, one hand supporting the elbow of the other, which in turn held his short brier pipe. "Good-mornin' to ye, Jimmy Bourke," said he each morning, and after that uttered no word until the evening, when it was, "Good-night to ye, Jimmy Bourke," with a final _rap, rap, rap_ of his pipe. The cook, a thin-faced, sly man, with a penchant for the _Police Gazette_, secretly admired him. "Luk' out for th' Rough Red; he'll do ye!" he would whisper hoarsely when he passed the silent scaler. But in the three days the Rough Red put his men to work on a little cabin. FitzPatrick at once took his scaling-rule from the corner and set out into the forest. His business was, by measuring the diameter of each log, to ascertain and tabulate the number of board feet put in by the contractor. On the basis of his single report James Bourke would be paid for the season's work. Inevitably he at once became James Bourke's natural enemy, and so of every man in the crew with the possible exception of the cook.