It was twelve miles from Camp Three to Deer River. We met other men on the road to town--men with wages in their pockets, trudging blithely toward the lights and liquor and drunken hilarity of the place. It was Saturday; and on Monday, ejected from the saloons, they would inevitably stagger back to the camps. I have heard of one kindly logger who dispatches a team to the nearest town every Monday morning to gather up his stupefied lumber-jacks from the bar-room floors and snake-rooms and haul them into the woods. VI "TO THE TALL TIMBER!" It is "back to the tall timber" for the penniless lumber-jack. Perhaps the familiar slang is derived from the necessity. I recall an intelligent Cornishman--a cook with a kitchen kept sweet and clean--who with a laugh contemplated the catastrophe of the snake-room, and the nervous collapse, and the bedraggled return to the woods. "Of course," said he, "that's where I'll land in the spring!" It amazed me. "Can't help it," said he. "That's where my stake 'll go. Jake Boore 'll get the most of it; and among the lot of them they'll get every cent. I'll blow four hundred dollars in two weeks--if I'm lucky enough to make it go that far." "When you know that they rob you?" "Certainly they will rob me; everybody knows _that_! But every year for nine years, now, I've tried to get out of the woods with my stake, and haven't done it. I intend to this year; but I know I won't. I'll strike for Deer River when I get my money; and I'll have a drink at Jake Boore's saloon, and when I get that drink down I'll be on my way. It isn't because I want to; it's because I have to." "But why?" "They won't let you do anything else," said the cook. "I've tried it for nine years. Every winter I've said to myself that I'll get out of the woods in the spring, and every spring I've been kicked out of a saloon dead broke. It's always been back to the tall timber for me." "What you need, Jones," said Higgins, who stood by, "is the grace of God in your heart." Jones laughed. "You hear me, Jones?" the Pilot repeated. "What you need is the grace of God in your heart." "The Pilot's mad," the cook laughed, but not unkindly. "The Pilot and I don't agree about religion," he explained; "and now he's mad because I won't go to church." This banter did not disturb the Pilot in the least. "I'm not mad, Jones," said he. "All I'm saying," he repeated, earnestly, fetching the cook's flour-board a thwack with his fist, "is that what you need is the grace of God in your heart." Again Jones laughed.