"You don't usually tackle Pulaski D. Britt for good, practical advice without gettin' it," he went on. "The girl is crazy after MacLeod. You'll find MacLeod square when he makes a promise. He's got fool notions about those things. And when she's married to him and settled down here in these woods, where she belongs, the chap that wants to make her Exhibit A in a slander against John Barrett will find himself up against a mighty tough proposition. You see that, don't you? Now the next thing is to get her out of the hands of that gang that want to use her against you." He mused a moment. "All that we need to do is to send a man up to Jerusalem to-morrow, and say that you're all ready to start for outside and propose to take the girl along. If any one in this world has any rights over her, you have. They can't refuse. And now we'll go to bed, John, for if ever two men needed sleep, I reckon we're the ones." But it was not unbroken slumber that came to them. The big winds outside roared with the sound of a bursting avalanche. Over the camp the sawing limbs of the interlaced crowns shrieked and groaned. There were deeper, further, and more mystic sounds, like mighty 'cellos. And when the great blow was at its height the wangan camp, built upon the roots of the splay-foot spruces, swayed with the writhing of the roots, creaked in its timbers, and seemed to toss like a craft on a crazy sea. There were noises near at hand in the woods like the detonations of heavy guns. Every now and then the earth shivered, and thunderous echoes boomed down the forest aisles. "Do you hear 'em John?" called Britt, at last. He had long been awake, and had marked the restless stirrings of the other in the bunk below him. "I've been listening an hour," said Barrett, despondently, "and it's big stuff that's coming down. Our loss by fire was small change to what this means to us, Pulaski. Withee has devilled my lands until there isn't a wind-break left." A roar like the awful voice of a park of artillery throbbed past them on the volleying wind. "I feel as though it was kissing a thousand dollars good-bye every time I hear one of those noises," said Britt. "The devil can play jack-straws in the Umcolcus region after this night, and find a new bunch every day." At last they looked dismally out on the dawn. The great gale had blown overhead and away, the rearguard clouds chasing it, and the hard growth, stripped of every vestige of leaf, gave pathetic testimony to the bitterness of the conflict of the night. The two lumber barons, staring anxiously up at the slopes of the black growth for signs of ravage, were confronted by Tommy Eye, meek, repentant, and shaky. "Sure, the witherlicks and the swamp swogons did howl last night, gents, and they all did say as how Tommy Eye ought to be ashamed of the size of his drink. And I've come back to you to get my kick." He turned humbly.