"Thank you," said Charley. "I feel better already. If you don't mind, I'm coming to you before each new job and get you to show me exactly how it should be done. A fellow can get along so much better if he really knows what he is talking about." "Good boy," smiled the forester. "I don't believe I am going to be disappointed in you, Charley." Charley shook the forester's hand and started back to his new habitation, which he reached just as supper was ready. After supper he and the ranger talked about the forest. Or rather Lumley did. He was so loquacious that Charley soon stopped talking and let his companion carry on the conversation alone. Lumley was quite able to do it, for he was truly, as Mr. Marlin had described him, mouthy. He had something to say about everything, and what he had to say was usually of a derogatory character. He was guarded in what he said about Mr. Marlin, yet Charley saw that he was trying to damn the forester by faint praise. "You may make a good ranger in time all right," he said bluntly to Charley, "but it seems mighty funny to me to take a raw high school boy and put him in charge of the finest stand of timber in the entire forest. I'm the man that post ought to go to. Besides, I have a greater interest in that timber than any one else." Charley choked back his resentment at the statement about himself and asked, "Why have you a greater interest in that timber than any one else?" "Because our family used to own that timber," he said, sudden passion inflaming his eyes. And Charley once more saw in them that savage look he had detected before. "If my old fool of a grandfather hadn't let himself be bilked out of the whole holding," he said coarsely, "I'd own that timber to-day and I'd be a millionaire instead of a poor forest-ranger. By rights the land is mine, anyway." And again the ranger swore at his dead ancestor. Charley listened in disgust but made no comment. The ranger saw that he had talked too much. He muttered an apology. "When I see somebody else getting the money that ought to be mine," he said, "it makes me so mad that I could almost commit murder." Then he quickly changed the conversation and once more became the smooth, oily individual he was when Charley first saw him. But Charley had seen and heard enough to be utterly disgusted with the man. As early as possible he got away to his room on the pretext of weariness, but it was a long time before he went to bed. Early next morning he was at headquarters, where Mr. Marlin introduced him to the half dozen men who were to serve under him. Ordinarily ten men would form a unit for planting, but Charley did not know that, and so was ignorant of the fact that Mr. Marlin had tried to make his first day of authority easy and successful by giving him only a few selected men to handle. Mr. Marlin introduced Charley to the men one by one, as they came in. Charley tried to talk to them, but found it rather difficult. The mountaineers had little to say.