I note the contrast with their normal selves the more, because, as a body of workmen, this is much the most wholesomely happy company which I have so far fallen in with. We are about twenty in number, a curiously assorted crew, all bred to the roughest life. Far up in the mountains, miles from any settlement, we live the healthful life of a lumber camp, working from starlight to starlight; breathing the mountain air, keen with the frosty vigor of autumn, and fragrant of pine and hemlock; eating ravenously the plain, well-cooked food which is served to us, now in the camp and now on the mountain-side, where we sit among the newly stripped logs; sleeping deeply at night in closely crowded beds in the cabin-loft, where the wind sweeps freely from end to end through the gaping chinks between the logs, and where, on rising, we sometimes slip out of bed upon a carpeting of snow. This is the life which these men know and which half-unconsciously they love, breaking from it at times, in a passion of discontent, and spending the earnings of months in a short, wild _abandon_ of debauch, but always coming back again, remorseful, ashamed to meet the faces of the other men, yet reviving as by miracle under the touch of their native life. They charm you with their freedom of spirit, and their rude sturdiness of character, until you find your heart warming to them with a real affection, and feeling for them the intimate pain of personal sorrow at sight of their cruel limitations. Away from their work, their one notion of the necessary accompaniment to leisure is money; and possessed of time and treasure, their first instinctive reach is after liquor and lust. Even now as Fitz-Adams and his brother, in yellow oil-cloth coats and wide tarpaulins, set out through the pouring rain in an open rig for English Centre, there is a chorus of voices from the door and windows of the cabin, shouting to them to bring back whiskey and plenty of it. If they do, and the rain continues, only God knows what the camp will be to-night. * * * * * * * * It is sixty miles, I should judge, from Pleasant Hill to Williamsport, and it proved a two days' march. Although the distance covered must have been about the same on both days, the difference that they each presented in actual experience of the journey was of the kind-of contrast which a wayfarer must expect. Monday was a faultless autumn day. The air was quick, and the roads were in good condition, and I was feeling fit, and was "passing rich" with three dollars and seventy-five cents, the wages of five days on the farm.