Half an hour later we had all returned to the lobby. The teamsters lit their lanterns, and went to care for the horses. Some of the men went up into the loft. Four had soon started a game of cards at the table, while most of the others filled the bench near the stove, or drew empty beer-kegs and old soap-boxes from their hiding, and completed the circle around the fire. Everyone was smoking, and all seemed highly content. I was crowded in between a lank young fellow with dark hair and eyes, and a long, lean nose, who was swearing comfortably at a gawky youth across the stove, and an older man, of heavier build, who had fine black eyes and a black mustache, a very pale complexion, and long black hair that lay in pasty ringlets about his face and on his neck. Soon I came to know these two as "Long-nosed Harry" and "Fred the Barber." I should explain at once that the camps have a curious nomenclature of their own. As among other workingmen whom I have known, so here, only a man's Christian name is used, but it is nearly always accompanied with an explanatory phrase. A new-comer in the camp is called "Buddy" until his name is learned, and some appropriate epithet is found, or until a nickname springs complete from the mysterious source of those appellatives. I knew that Fred the Barber was making ready to speak to me, and I was on my guard, when, while the talk was running high, I heard a voice close to my ear: "Say, Buddy, you ain't a pedler, are you?" "No." "I thought you warn't." And Fred the Barber settled farther down upon his seat, and folded his arms, and puffed in silence on his pipe, with the air of a man who finds deep satisfaction in his own sagacity. Soon he returned to the cross-examination. "Say, Buddy, are you going to work in the woods?" "Yes, the boss took me on this evening." "Ain't you never worked in the woods before?" His pipe was out of his mouth now, and his eyes shone with a livelier interest. "No." "How's that?" "Why, I'm working my way out West, and my money gave out in Williamsport; and when I went looking for a job, I was told that I could get work in the woods. So I came up here." "Well, you ain't struck a soft snap, Buddy. Jim the Boss is a square man, but he can beat the devil at work, and he don't go easy on a new hand. This is my tenth season in the woods, and I earn two dollars a day right along; but I'm going to quit, it's too rough."