Half of the dozen cried out in terror: “No, no! We no quit. Please, boss; we no quit.” A smile of complete contempt curled Reivers’ thin upper lip. “You poor scum, of course you ain’t going to quit,” he sneered. “You’ll stay here and slave away until I’m through with you. And don’t you even dare think of quitting. Rosky thought he’d kept his plans mighty secret—thought I wouldn’t know what he was planning. You see what happened to him. “I know everything that’s going on in this camp. If you don’t believe it, try it out and see. Now pick this thing up—” he stirred the groaning Rosky contemptuously with his foot—“and carry him into his bunk. I’ll be around and set his leg when I get ready. Then get back to the rock-pile and make up for the time it’s taken to teach you this lesson.” The brutality of the thing had frozen Toppy motionless where he sat in the sleigh. At the same time he was conscious of a thrill of admiration for the dominant creature who had so contemptuously crippled a fellow man. A brute Reivers certainly was, and well he deserved the name of Hell-Camp Reivers; but a born captain he was, too, though his dominance was of a primordial sort. Turning instantly from his victim as from a piece of business that is finished, Reivers looked around and came toward the sleigh. Some primitive instinct prompted Toppy to step out and stretch himself leisurely, his long arms above his head, his big chest inflated to the limit. At the sight of him a change came over Reivers’ face. The brutality and contempt went out of it like a flash. His eyes lighted up with pleasure at the sight of Toppy’s magnificent proportions, and he smiled a quick smile of comradeship, such as one smiles when he meets a fellow and equal, and held out his hand to Toppy. “University man, I’ll wager,” he said, in the easy voice of a man of culture. “Glad to see you; more than glad! These beasts are palling on me. They’re so cursed physical—no mind, no spirit in them. Nothing but so many pounds of meat and bone. Old Campbell, my blacksmith, is the only other intelligent being in camp, and he’s Scotch and believes in predestination and original sin, so his conversation’s rather trying for a steady diet.” Toppy shook hands, amazed beyond expression. Except for his shaggy eyebrows—brows that somehow reminded Toppy of the head of a bear he had once shot—Reivers now was the sort of man one would expect to meet in the University Club rather than in a logging-camp. The brute had vanished, the gentleman had appeared; and Toppy was forced to smile in answer to Reivers’ genial smile of greeting. And yet, somewhere back in Reivers’ blue eyes Toppy saw lurking something which said, “I am your master—doubt it if you dare.” “I hired out as blacksmith’s helper,” he explained. “My name’s Treplin.” He did not take his eyes from Reivers’. Somehow he had the sensation that Reivers’ will and his own had leaped to a grapple. Reivers laughed aloud in friendly fashion.