"Well, there’s going to be one! I meant to come back ten days ago, but something happened and I decided to start work this fall, not wait for spring, so I stayed on. There was sickness at a settlement back in the woods. Many people almost died, some of them did, because they couldn’t get a doctor and proper care. It’s criminal to put women and children in such a hole; there’s got to be a road connecting those places with—help! A man is a brute to take a woman with him under such conditions. What _he_ wants goes! He never thinks of _her_ part." "But, Tom, maybe she, the woman, wants to go." "He ought not to let her, he knows." "But if she just will go, what then, Tom?" "It doesn’t make it right for him, he knows." "But it might be worse to stay back, Tom. A woman might choose to go." "But _she_ doesn’t know; _he_ does." "But she may want to know, and be willing to pay." "Donelle, you’re a crazy little know-nothing." Tom looked down and laughed. He was wondrously happy. "Always wanting to pay for what isn’t worth it." "You’re wrong, Tom. It is worth it." "What?" "Why, the thing that makes a woman want to go into the woods with a man, even when there are no roads; the thing that makes her willing to pay before she knows." Tom breathed hard. "I suppose it is—love, Tom." "It’s something worse, often!" Gavot turned his eyes away from the upturned face. "Lately, Tom," Donelle came close to him and touched his arm as she walked beside him, "I’ve been thinking about such a lot of new things and love among them." "Love!" And now Tom stood still, as if an unseen blow had stunned him. "Yes, and I had no one to talk to. I couldn’t speak to Mamsey. Always I think of you, Tom, whenever thoughts come. You see everything, just as you see your roads in the deep woods. Are you tired, Tom?" "No," Gavot got control of himself, "no, not tired." "You see," and now they were going on again, "the big feelings of life just come to everyone. They don’t pick, and when you are young, you have young thoughts. That is the way it seems to me, and often, Tom Gavot, the very things that you ought to have an old head to think about come when you haven’t any sense at all." This tremendous truth fell from the girlish lips quite irrelevantly. "And then you just take and pay what you must, but often you have to pay more than you ought, because—well, because you are young when you bought——" Donelle sobbed. "I’ve been thinking of Mamsey," she ended pitifully. Tom stopped short. He flung his pack on the ground and laid his strong, work-hardened hands on Donelle’s shoulders. "You don’t have to pay for Mam’selle," he said in a whisper; "she’s paid, God knows." "But I’ve got to pay for my father, Tom." "What do you mean?"