He cast a glance behind him. Britt had the box open, and had dug out of the sawdust some cylinders in brown-paper wrappings. When MacLeod whirled again to face Wade the latter put out his hand without reservation in face or gesture. Months before, such amazing repentance and conversion might have astonished him, but now he understood the real ingenuousness of the woods. Pulaski Britt, hardened by avarice and outside associations, was not of the true life of the woods. This impulsive boy, with his mighty muscles and his tender heart, was of the woods, and only the woods. MacLeod came one step nearer to Rodburd Ide, and pulled off his hat. "If it ain't too much trouble, Mr. Ide, I wish you'd tell Miss Nina that I've done it square and righted it fair. And don't scowl at me that way, Mr. Ide! It was a dream--and I've woke up! It was a pretty wild dream--and a man does queer things in his sleep. Your girl ain't for me or my kind, and I know it, now that I've woke up. I'd like to tell her so, and explain, but I don't know how to do it, Mr. Ide. You do it for me. I ask you man-fashion!" He started away from them hastily, strode back to the bateaux, and began to swear at the men who had stopped work to gaze on the Honorable Pulaski. The latter had already embarked in a bateau, carrying several of those ominous sticks wrapped in their brown-paper cases. "Britt," shrieked Ide, "we've been to law with you to find out our rights! Ain't you willin' to take your own medicine?" "Hell on your law!" blazed the drive-master, contemptuously. "Give us time to get an injunction before you destroy our good property," demanded the little man, choking with his ire. For answer Britt shook one of the dynamite sticks above his head without even turning to look back. His men crowded the boat over the boom at the sorting-gap, and Britt lighted the fuse and tossed the explosive upon the anchored log platform. "Oh, if our men were only here instead of at Enchanted!" mourned Ide. "They're just where we ought to have them, Mr. Ide," the young man growled. Britt was safely away up-river when the dynamite did its work; his men had rowed like fiends. It was a beautiful job, viewed from the stand-point of destruction. The downward thrust of the mighty force splintered the platform into toothpicks and let the booms adrift. The partners of Enchanted did not exchange comments. They gazed after the destroyer. Taking his time, as though to prolong their distress, Britt dynamited the booms above, and then stood up and jerked his arm as a signal for his crew to follow. They went splashing up the river, six oars to a bateau, and disappeared, one boat after the other, bound for the mouth of Jerusalem Stream. Already the jaws of the Hulling Machine were gulping down the gobbets of splintered logs.