“The music of our burnished ax shall make the woods resound, And many a lofty ancient pine will tumble to the ground. At night around our shanty fire we'll sing while rude winds blow, OH!--we'll range the wild woods o'er while a-lumbering we go!” That was what he was here for. Things were going right. It would be pitiful to fail merely on account of this idiotic lassitude, this unmanly weakness, this boyish impatience and desire for play. He a woodsman! He a fellow with these big strong men! A single voice, clear and high, struck into a quick measure: “I am a jolly shanty boy, As you will soon discover; To all the dodges I am fly, A hustling pine-woods rover. A peavey-hook it is my pride, An ax I well can handle. To fell a tree or punch a bull, Get rattling Danny Randall.” And then with a rattle and crash the whole Fighting Forty shrieked out the chorus: “Bung yer eye! bung yer eye!” Active, alert, prepared for any emergency that might arise; hearty, ready for everything, from punching bulls to felling trees--that was something like! Thorpe despised himself. The song went on. “I love a girl in Saginaw, She lives with her mother. I defy all Michigan To find such another. She's tall and slim, her hair is red, Her face is plump and pretty. She's my daisy Sunday best-day girl, And her front name stands for Kitty.” And again as before the Fighting Forty howled truculently: “Bung yer eye! bung yer eye!” The words were vulgar, the air a mere minor chant. Yet Thorpe's mind was stilled. His aroused subconsciousness had been engaged in reconstructing these men entire as their songs voiced rudely the inner characteristics of their beings. Now his spirit halted, finger on lip. Their bravery, pride of caste, resource, bravado, boastfulness,--all these he had checked off approvingly. Here now was the idea of the Mate. Somewhere for each of them was a “Kitty,” a “daisy Sunday best-day girl”; the eternal feminine; the softer side; the tenderness, beauty, glory of even so harsh a world as they were compelled to inhabit. At the present or in the past these woods roisterers, this Fighting Forty, had known love. Thorpe arose abruptly and turned at random into the forest. The song pursued him as he went, but he heard only the clear sweet tones, not the words. And yet even the words would have spelled to his awakened sensibilities another idea,--would have symbolized however rudely, companionship and the human delight of acting a part before a woman. “I took her to a dance one night, A mossback gave the bidding-- Silver Jack bossed the shebang, and Big Dan played the fiddle. We danced and drank the livelong night With fights between the dancing, Till Silver Jack cleaned out the ranch And sent the mossbacks prancing.”