Dennis went up to the house. There was one house at the inlet: a four- roomed frame building with three coats of paint on it and a red roof. It stood some distance from the collection of shacks and cabins at the mouth of the Coho River, and it overlooked some of the most glorious scenery in the world. In front stretched the Sound, a silver sea just dimpled by the soft spring breeze. To right and left, and behind, lay the forest--that silent land of the North, illimitable as space, everlastingly green when the snows had melted, shadowy, mysterious, terrible! As Dennis approached the house he heard a terrific sound--the crash of a felled and falling tree--some giant who had held his own in the struggle for existence when William the Norman ruled in England. And then, from all points of the compass, the echoes, in varying cadence, repeated that tremendous, awe-inspiring sound--the last sobbing cry of a Titan. A moment later Mamie received him and ushered him into the parlour, where a small piano, a table of shellwork, and crimson plush curtains challenged the interest and curiosity of all who were privileged to behold them. "Let me take yer hat," said Mamie. The hand she held out trembled slightly. Dennis perceived that she was thinner and paler. "Yer well fixed," he murmured. "An' happy as a clam, I reckon?" "I'd oughter be happy," said Mamie dubiously. Then she added hastily, "Never expected to see you in a logging-camp." "No? Wal, I kinder wondered how you was makin' it. You don't look extry peart, Mis' Barker. Lonesome for ye, ain't it?" Already he knew that except for a few squaws she was the only woman in the camp. "I don't mind that," said Mrs. Barker. Something in her tone arrested his attention. Stupid and slow though he was, he divined that Mamie's thin, white cheeks and trembling hands were not caused by lonesomeness. He stared at her intently, till the blood gushed into her face. And then and there he knew almost everything. "Got a baby?" he asked thickly. She answered savagely, "No, I haven't, thank God!" Above the chimneypiece hung an enlarged photograph of her husband, taken a couple of days after his wedding. Mr. Barker had faced the camera with the same brutal complacency which distinguished all his actions. He smiled grimly, thrusting forward his heavy lower jaw, inviting inspection, obviously pleased to exhibit himself as a ferocious and untamed animal. Through the sleeves of his ill-cut black coat the muscles of his arms and shoulders showed bulgingly. The ordinary observer, looking at the photograph for the first time, would be likely to reflect: "Here is a ruffian who needs a licking, but he has not got it yet." "How's paw?" said Mamie. "Las' time I seen the old man he was paralysed drunk, as usual." "Yes, he would be that," assented Mamie indifferently.