When the poor creature came crawling to the fire on hands and knees at dusk that evening, hairy, pitiable, and drooling with hunger, Rodburd Ide accepted him with resignation, though he recognized Britt's petty malice; for unless he were driven, Abe Skeet would never have come past a well-stocked lumber-camp to follow wanderers into the wilderness. That night the Enchanted crew camped on Attean Stream, a short day's journey from their destination. The tired men snatched supper from their packs and fell back snoring, their heads on their dunnage-bags. They were away in the first flush of the morning, Rodburd Ide leading with his partner. Wade welcomed the little man's absorbed interest in the business ahead of them. Ide asked no questions about the incident at Durfy's. Wade put the hideous topic as far behind other thoughts as he could, and soon other thoughts crowded it out. As they passed from the zone of striped maple, round-wood, witch-hobble, and mountain holly that Mother Nature had drawn across her naked breast after the rude hand of Pulaski Britt had stripped the virgin growth, his heart lifted. Under the great spruces of Enchanted the town's bricks, streets, and human passions seemed very far away. Before he slept that night he had had an experience that thrilled the sense of the primitive self hidden within him, as it is hidden in all men, and covered by conventions. He had staked the metes and bounds, the corners, the frontage, all the dimensions of a new home, where no roof except the crowns of trees had ever shut sunlight off the earth. Mankind in general opens eyes within walls that the hands of those coming before have built. Many have no occasion to seek ever for other quarters than those their fathers have given them. With most the limit of exploration is the quest for a new rental. Mankind who build, build along settled streets, first taking note that sewers and water systems have been installed. Even in the woods most crews come up to find that the advance skirmishers have builded main camp, meal camp, horse-hovels, and wangan. Owing to the sudden forming of Rodburd Ide's partnership with the young man whom Fate threw in his way, and his equally sudden determination to operate on virgin Enchanted, there had been no time for preliminaries. Even the tote teams with the first of the winter's supplies were miles away down the trail, for in the woods the human two-foot outclasses the equine four-foot.