"Zen you know!" asserted Trudeau. "Zen you are zho_king_ wiz me. Zese huntaire sink brown cloth coat, gray coat, black coat, anysing zat move--she sink zem every time a deer. Las' wintaire lots men killed for deer. Pete St. Cyr's boy kill deer, hang heem in tree, and nex' morning take heem on back an' tote. A city huntaire see deer-hide wiz hair on mov_ing_, an him! sof'-nose bullet go thoo deer, thoo Pete St. Cyr's boy's head! Zat zhaquette damn-fool thing!" "It goes either side out," said the hunter. "I can turn it, you know." "_I_ turn heem! _I_ turn heem!" said Trudeau, suiting the action to the word. "Red is bettaire, by gosh--in zese wood'." Trudeau watched his companion as he made his laborious way through the cut-over chaos until he disappeared; but he did not see him pause when out of sight of camp, and turn toward the lake. "I would rather it were any one else," said Van Dorn, as if to something that walked by his side; "but what difference does it make? Why not let him finish his work?" The sheer difficulty of the country brought back to Van Dorn something like the forester's alertness. The lust for lumber had ravaged the spiry forest, and left, inextricably tangled, the wrecks of the noble trees--forest maidens whose beauty had been their destruction; only the crooked and ugly having escaped. So deep and complex was the wreckage that it seemed like the spilikins of a giants' game of jack-straws--gnarled logs, limbs like _chevaux-de-frise_, saplings and underbrush growing up through chaos. And spread over and sifted through all was the snow, as light as down. Van Dorn must have told the truth as to his former visits; for he went on like one used to this terrible maze. Nowhere could he take three steps straight forward: it was always climbing up, or leaping down, or going around, or crawling under. Here thick leaves upheld the snow, and in the dry pine straw on the ground he could hear the forest mice rustle and scurry. There a field was smoothed over by the snow, as a trap is hidden by sand, covering débris just high enough to imperil the limbs of the pedestrian. Yonder was a tamarack swamp too thick to be pierced: and everywhere it was over and under and up and down, and desperately hard, for miles and miles, with no place for repose. He gazed away over the strange abomination of desolation, blindly reflecting upon man's way of coming, doing his worst, and passing on with sated appetite, leaving ruin--as he had done here. He wondered why that tall tract of virgin pine over at the right had been allowed to escape, standing against the sky like a black wall, spiked with tall rampikes. He stared fixedly at the snow, the blue shadows, the black pines, somnambulistic again.