Young Charlie was allowed to go on some of the shorter expeditions, but for the most part he was to be found dogging the heels of Bill Carmody; or perched upon a flour-barrel in the cook-shack, listening to the tales of Daddy Dunnigan. The ladies busied themselves with the care of the two rooms, with useless needlework, and with dummy auction, varying the monotony with daily excursions into the near-by forest in quest of spruce-gum and pine-cones. Since the morning Charlie had broken in so incontinently upon their breakfast no reference had been made to Bill Carmody by any member of the party; while the foreman pursued the even tenor of his way, apparently as unconcerned by their existence as they were by his. One afternoon as the ladies were starting upon one of their tramps they came face to face with the foreman, who tipped his cap, bowed coldly, and passed into the office, closing the door behind him. Mrs. Appleton halted suddenly, glanced toward the building, and retraced her steps. It was but a short distance, and Ethel walked back, waiting at the door while her aunt entered their own apartment. The girl watched abstractedly, thinking the older woman had returned for something she had forgotten. Suddenly she became all attention, and a hot flush of anger mounted to her face as she saw her aunt walk to the table, pick up her purse and several rings which she had left, and with a glance at the thick, log wall which separated the room from the office, deliberately walk to her trunk and place the articles under lock and key. Apparently Mrs. Appleton had not noticed the girl's presence, but more than once during the afternoon the corners of her mouth twitched when, in response to some question or remark of hers, the shortness of the girl's replies bordered upon absolute rudeness. And late that night she smiled broadly in the darkness when the low sound of stifled sobs came from the direction of the girl's cot. Immediately after breakfast the following morning, Ethel put on her wraps and started out alone. Arriving, after a long, aimless ramble, at the outermost end of a skidway, she sat upon a log to rest and watch a huge swamper who, unaware of her presence, was engaged in slashing the underbrush from in front of a group of large logs. Finally, tiring of the sight, she arose and started for the clearing, and then suddenly drew back and stepped behind the bole of a great pine, for, striding rapidly toward her on the skidway was Bill Carmody, and she pressed still closer to the tree-trunk that he might pass without observing her. He was very close now, and the girl noticed the peculiar expression of his face--an expression she had seen there once before--his lips were smiling, and his gray eyes were narrowed almost to slits.