For four days now he had struggled behind old Christopher through tangled undergrowth of striped maple, witch hobble, and mountain holly--Mother Nature's pathetic attempt to cover with ragged and stunted growth the breast that the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt had stripped bare. "He cut her three times," Christopher explained. "First time the virgin black growth--and as handsome a stand of timber as ye ever put calipers to; second time, the battens--all under eleven inches through; third time, even the poles. That's forestry as he practises it! He's robbin' the squirrels!" Britt! Wade had seen rotting tops that would have yielded logs--the refuse of the first reckless and wasteful cutting. He had passed skidways and toiled over corduroy in which thousands of feet of good spruce had been left to decay. The deploring finger of the watchful Christopher pointed out butts hacked off head high. "The best timber in the log left standin' there, Mr. Wade. But Pulaski Britt ain't lettin' his men stop to shovel snow away." Britt behind him, in the tangled undergrowth! Britt about him, in the straggle of trees on the hard-wood ridges! Britt ahead of him, where the black growth shaded the mountains in the blue distance! The same Britt who had so contemptuously tossed him aside as useless baggage when Foreman Colin MacLeod had demanded his discharge! Wade clutched calipers and axe, and went leaping after old Christopher with new strength in his legs. But in spite of the vigor that resentment lent him, he was glad when the guide tossed off his pack beside a brook that trickled under mossy rocks on the hard-wood slope. It was good to hear the tinkle of water, to feel the solid ground after the weird wobbling of the sphagnum moss, and to snuff the smoke of the handful of fire crackling under the tea-pail. They were munching biscuits and bacon, nursing pannikins of tea between their knees, when Christopher cocked an ear, darted a glance, and mumbled a mild oath as savor to his mouthful of biscuit. "Set to eat a snack within a mile of Misery Gore and one of them crows will appear to ye. And that's the old he one of them all." The old man who came shuffling slowly down the path was gaunt with the leanness of want, and unkempt with the squalor of the hopelessly pauperized. "It's one of the Misery Gore squatters, Mr. Wade. All Skeets and Bushees, and married back and forth and crossways and upside down till ev'ry man is his own grandmother, if he only knew enough to figger relationship. All State paupers, and no more sprawl to 'em than there is to a fresh-water clam." Old Christopher, with Yankee contempt of the thrifty for the willing pauper, grumbled on in his scornful explanations after the old man sat down opposite them. Wade, accustomed to politer usages, winced before this brutal frankness. He plainly felt worse than the subject, who looked from one to the other, his blue lips slavering at sight of the food.