It was Sam’s first opportunity to inspect a lumber camp, and he studied with keen interest the long, low room, with its walls of logs, its big stove, its line of bunks against each wall, and its “deacon’s seat,” or bench built beside the bunks. The windows were few and small. Roughly as the house was built, it was very solidly put together, while drafts were lessened by moss packed between the logs. Here and there hung spare clothing and extra boots. There was no attempt anywhere at adornment or decoration, but order of a sort seemed to be maintained, the order which places everything where it can be most handily come at. Dusk was falling, and the choppers began to straggle into the camp. With them came the “yard men,” whose business it is to handle and pile the logs, and the teamsters. Strapping big fellows were most of Kane’s crew, roughly clad for rough work, hard as nails, and hungry as bears. Among the last to arrive was Peter Groche, who slouched into the big room, grunted when his eyes fell upon Lon and the boys, halted for an instant, regarding them evilly, and finally made his way to what appeared to be his especial corner. There he remained until the whole company trooped through the doorway in the partition to the combined kitchen and dining-room. This filled the ell of the camp. There was a range in one corner, and a table of boards ran the length of the room, benches serving as seats. Behind these were two bunks for the cook and the cookee. The supper, everything being eaten from tin plates, made up in quantity what it lacked in variety. Beans, baked with pork, formed the principal dish, most excellent beans and in seemingly inexhaustible supply. Then there were enormous camp doughnuts, which would have appalled a dyspeptic, but which proved to be singularly toothsome and comforting after a day in the open. Tea, sweetened with molasses, was drunk from tin cups. The boys may not have been able to match the huge appetites of the woodsmen, but they ate and ate until, as Poke whispered to Step, he’d have to stop or hitch two belts together; for the food, simple as it was, was well cooked and tempting enough to hungry folk, young or old. Sam divided attention between Orkney and Peter Groche. The cookee, of course, was busy throughout the meal, devoting himself to his tasks and going about them in businesslike fashion. Sam fancied Tom was not in high favor with the men, though it certainly could not be alleged that he neglected them. Still, Tom’s was a dogged and silent manner of performance not calculated to secure popularity anywhere.