They were miles along the rough road before he looked at the girl. At the movement of his head she turned her own, and in the piquant face above the big white bow of the veil he saw real sympathy. He did not speak, but he looked into her clear eyes--eyes that had the country girl's spirit and a resourcefulness beyond her years--and from them he drew a certain comfort. "Mr. Wade," she said, at last, "I'm only nineteen years old, but up in Castonia settlement we see what men are without the wrappings on them. I don't know much about real society, but I've read about it, and I guess society women get sort of dazzled by the outside polish and don't see things very clear. But up our way, with what they see of men, girls get to be women young. You are a college graduate and a school-teacher and all that, and I'm only nineteen, but--well, it just seems to me I can't help reaching over like this--" She patted his arm. "--And what I feel like saying is, 'Poor boy!'" There was such vibrant sympathy in her voice that though he set his teeth, clinched his hands, and summoned all his resolution, his nervous strain slackened and the tears came into his eyes--tears that had been slowly welling ever since he had turned from John Barrett's door. It was woman's attempt at consolation that broke through his restraint. "I don't blame you much for squizzlin' a little," broke in the stage-driver, who saw this emotion without catching the conversation. "He did bring his huck down solid when he stamped. But I've been calked myself, and a tobacker poultice allus does the business for me--northin' better for p'isen in a wound." The chaney man reached his hand to the girl under the shelter of the seat-back. "Shake!" he said, simply. "I've come up here to stay awhile, and it's good to feel that I've got one friend that's--that's a woman." "And you--" She faltered and paused to listen, lips apart. "I've come to stay," he repeated, grimly. He listened too. Far behind them they heard the dull rumble of the heavy wagons over the ledges. The raucous howling of the revellers had something wolf-like about it. It seemed to close the line of retreat. Ahead were the big woods, looming darkly on the mountain ridges--that vast region of man to man, and the devil take the weak. And again he said, not boastingly, but with a quiet setting of his tense jaw muscles: "I've come to stay." CHAPTER V DURING THE PUGWASH HANG-UP "With eddies and rapids it's middlin' tough, To worry a log-drive through. But to manage a woman is more than enough For a West Branch driving crew." --Leeboomook Song. Just how Tommy Eye escaped so nimbly from the ruck of the fight at the foot of Pugwash Hill he never knew nor understood, his wits not being of the clearest that day--and the others being too busy to notice.