Above the rumble of the starting car-wheels Wade heard the mills of Stillwater screaming their farewell taunt at him. Then the Honorable Pulaski Britt came and sat down in his seat, penning him next to the window. "Yes, sir," said Britt, with keen memory as to where he had left off in his previous conversation and with dogged determination to have his say out, "a man that reads a book written by a perfesser that don't know the difference between a ramdown and a dose of catnip tea, and then thinks he understands forestry of the kind that there's a dollar in, needs to have his head examined for hollows. Do you find anything in them books about how to get the best figgers on dressed beef?--and when you are buyin' it in fifty-ton lots for a dozen camps a half a cent on a pound means something! Is there anything about hirin' men and makin' 'em stay and work, gettin' cooks and saw-filers that know their business, chasin' thieves away from depot-camps, keepin' crews from losin' half the tools? Forestry! Making trees grow! Gawd-amighty, young man, Nature will attend to the tree-growin'. That's all Nature has got to do. She was doin' it before we got here, and doin' it well, and do you reckon we have any right to set up and tell Nature her business? I've got something else to think of besides tellin' Nature how to run her end. I'd like to know how to grow men instead of trees. My Jerusalem boss, MacLeod, writes me he has been two weeks getting together his hundred men for that operation. He'll meet me at the Umcolcus junction, up the line here a hundred miles. And I've been tryin' most of that time to get hold of the right sort of a 'chaney man.'" Wade, in his resentment at Britt's intrusion on his thoughts, was in no mood for philological research, but sudden and rather idle curiosity impelled him to ask what a "chaney man" was. "Why, a clerk--a camp clerk, time-keeper, wangan store overseer, supply accountant, and all that," snapped Britt, with small patience for the young man's ignorance. At that instant it came more plainly to Wade that he was a fugitive. When he had left Elva Barrett behind he had let go the strongest cable of hope. A day before--the day after--his manly spirit probably would not have allowed him to become a clerk for Pulaski Britt. This day the impetuous desire to hide in the woods, to escape the wasps of humanity, to be in some place where sneers and false pity and taunt could not reach him--that desire was coined into performance. "Wouldn't I fit into a job of that sort, Mr. Britt?" he asked, blurting the question. And when the lumberman stared at him with as much astonishment as Pulaski Britt ever allowed himself to display, Wade added, "I have given up school-teaching because--well, I want to get into the woods for my health!"