Long before daylight began to grey the sky above the eastern timber-line the men were out at their posts, waiting for sufficient light to begin the day’s work. Once the work began it went ahead with a fury that seemed to carry all men with it. Reivers was everywhere that a man dared to pause for a moment to shirk his job. He used his hands now, for a broken leg or rib laid a man up, and he had use for the present for every man he could muster. He scarcely looked at the men he hit, breaking their faces with a sudden, treacherous blow, cursing them coldly until, despite their injuries, they leaped at their work, then whirling away to fall upon some other luckless one elsewhere. He was a fury, a merciless elemental force, with no consideration for the strength and endurance of men; sparing no one any more than he spared himself, and rushing his whole force along at top speed by sheer power of the spirit of leadership that possessed him. Men ceased for the time being to growl and pray that the Snow-Burner would get his just due. They had no thought nor energies for anything but keeping pace in the whirlwind rush of work through which the Snow-Burner drove them. In the blacksmith-shop the same condition prevailed as elsewhere in the camp. The extra hurry of the work in the timber meant extra accidents, which meant breakages. There were chain-links to be forged and fitted to broken chains; sharp two-inch calks to be driven into the horses’ shoes, peaveys and cant-hooks to be repaired. Besides the regular blacksmith-work of the camp, which was quite sufficient to keep Campbell and one helper comfortably employed, there was now added each day a bulk of extra work due to the strain under which men, horses and tools were working. Old Campbell, grimly resolute that Reivers should have no excuse to fall foul of him, drove himself and his helper at a speed second only to that with which he had so roughly greeted Toppy to the rough world of bodily labour. But the Toppy who now hammered and toiled at Campbell’s side was a different man from the champagne-softened youth who had come into camp a little while before. The puffiness was gone from under his eyes, the looseness from his lips and the fat from around the middle. Through his veins the blood now surged with no taint of cumbering poison; his tissues tingled with life and healthiness.