“Harry,” he said suddenly with a crisp decision new to his voice, “will you take a little walk with me down by the dam. I want to talk with you.” They strolled to the edge of the bank and stood for a moment looking at the swirling waters. “I want you to tell me all about logging,” began Wallace. “Start from the beginning. Suppose, for instance, you had bought this pine here we were talking about,--what would be your first move?” They sat side by side on a log, and Thorpe explained. He told of the building of the camps, the making of the roads; the cutting, swamping, travoying, skidding; the banking and driving. Unconsciously a little of the battle clang crept into his narrative. It became a struggle, a gasping tug and heave for supremacy between the man and the wilderness. The excitement of war was in it. When he had finished, Wallace drew a deep breath. “When I am home,” said he simply, “I live in a big house on the Lake Shore Drive. It is heated by steam and lighted by electricity. I touch a button or turn a screw, and at once I am lighted and warmed. At certain hours meals are served me. I don't know how they are cooked, or where the materials come from. Since leaving college I have spent a little time down town every day; and then I've played golf or tennis or ridden a horse in the park. The only real thing left is the sailing. The wind blows just as hard and the waves mount just as high to-day as they did when Drake sailed. All the rest is tame. We do little imitations of the real thing with blue ribbons tied to them, and think we are camping or roughing it. This life of yours is glorious, is vital, it means something in the march of the world;--and I doubt whether ours does. You are subduing the wilderness, extending the frontier. After you will come the backwoods farmer to pull up the stumps, and after him the big farmer and the cities.” The young follow spoke with unexpected swiftness and earnestness. Thorpe looked at him in surprise. “I know what you are thinking,” said the boy, flushing. “You are surprised that I can be in earnest about anything. I'm out of school up here. Let me shout and play with the rest of the children.” Thorpe watched him with sympathetic eyes, but with lips that obstinately refused to say one word. A woman would have felt rebuffed. The boy's admiration, however, rested on the foundation of the more manly qualities he had already seen in his friend. Perhaps this very aloofness, this very silent, steady-eyed power appealed to him. “I left college at nineteen because my father died,” said he. “I am now just twenty-one. A large estate descended to me, and I have had to care for its investments all alone. I have one sister, that is all.” “So have I,” cried Thorpe, and stopped. “The estates have not suffered,” went on the boy simply. “I have done well with them. But,” he cried fiercely, “I HATE it! It is petty and mean and worrying and nagging! That's why I was so glad to get out in the woods.”