The man halted scarcely fifty feet from her, at the place where the swamper, with wide blows of his axe, was laying the small saplings and brushwood low. She started at the cold softness of the tones of his voice. "Leduc," he said, "just a minute--it will hardly take longer." The man turned quickly at the sound of the voice at his side, and for the space of seconds the two big men faced each other on the packed snow of the skidway. Then, with a motion of incredible swiftness, and without apparent effort, the foreman's right arm shot out and his fist landed squarely upon the nose of the huge swamper. The girl heard the wicked spat, and the peculiar, frightened grunt as the man reeled backward, and saw the quick gush of red blood that splashed down his front and squirted out over the snow. Before the man had time to recover, the foreman advanced a step and struck again. This time it was his left hand that clove the air in a long, clean swing, and the man went down into the snow without a sound as the fist thudded against his neck just below the ear. Without so much as a glance at the man in the snow, Bill Carmody turned on his heel and started back down the skidway. Few seconds had elapsed, and a strange, barbaric thrill ran through the girl's body as she looked out upon the scene, quickly followed by a wave of sickening pity for the poor wretch who lay sprawled in the snow. And, then, a great anger surged into her heart against the man who had felled him. She dashed from her hiding-place, and in a moment stood facing him, her blue eyes flashing. "You _brute_!" she cried, "what right had you? Why did you strike him?" The man regarded her gravely, lifting his cap politely as if answering a most commonplace question. "Because," he replied, "I wanted to," and, with a curt bow, stepped into the timber and disappeared, leaving her alone in the skidway with the bloody, unconscious form in the snow. Never in her life had Ethel Manton been so furiously angry--not because a man had been felled by a blow--she had forgotten that--but because, in demanding an explanation, in attempting to call Bill Carmody to account, she had laid herself open to his stinging rebuff. Without pretense of defense or justification, the man had quietly told her that he knocked the swamper down "because he wanted to"; and without waiting for comment--as if the fact that "he wanted to" was sufficient in itself--had gone about his business without giving the matter a second thought. The flash of anger, which in the first place had prompted her to speak to the man, was but an impulsive protest against what she considered an act of brutality; but that quickly passed. The anger that surged through her heart as she gazed, white-faced, at the spot where the big man disappeared, was the bitter anger of outraged dignity and injured pride.