“I came out here a Communist—­” said the Boy one day to the Colonel.

“And an agnostic,” smiled the older man.

“Oh, I’m an agnostic all right, now and for ever.  But this winter has cured my faith in Communism.”

Early February brought not only lengthening daylight, but a radical change in the weather.  The woodsmen worked in their shirt-sleeves, perspired freely, and said in the innocence of their hearts, “If winter comes early up here, spring does the same.”  The whole hillside was one slush, and the snow melting on the ill-made Little Cabin roof brought a shower-bath into the upper bunk.

Few things in nature so surely stir the pulse of man as the untimely coming of a few spring days, that have lost their way in the calendar, and wandered into winter.  No trouble now to get the Big Chimney men away from the fireside.  They held up their bloodless faces in the faint sunshine, and their eyes, with the pupils enlarged by the long reign of night, blinked feebly, like an owl’s forced to face the morning.

There were none of those signs in the animal world outside, of premature stir and cheerful awaking, that in other lands help the illusion that winter lies behind, but there was that even more stimulating sweet air abroad, that subtle mixture of sun and yielding frost, that softened wind that comes blowing across the snow, still keen to the cheek, but subtly reviving to the sensitive nostril, and caressing to the eyes.  The Big Chimney men drew deep breaths, and said in their hearts the battle was over and won.

Kaviak, for ever following at Mac’s heels “like a rale Irish tarrier,” found his allegiance waver in these stirring, blissful days, if ever Farva so belied character and custom as to swing an axe for any length of time.  Plainly out of patience, Kaviak would throw off the musk-rat coat, and run about in wet mucklucks and a single garment—­uphill, downhill, on important errands which he confided to no man.

It is part of the sorcery of such days that men’s thoughts, like birds’, turn to other places, impatient of the haven that gave them shelter in rough weather overpast.  The Big Chimney men leaned on their axes and looked north, south, east, west.

Then the Colonel would give a little start, turn about, lift his double-bitter, and swing it frontier fashion, first over one shoulder, then over the other, striking cleanly home each time, working with a kind of splendid rhythm more harmonious, more beautiful to look at, than most of the works of men.  This was, perhaps, the view of his comrades, for they did a good deal of looking at the Colonel.  He said he was a modest man and didn’t like it, and Mac, turning a little rusty under the gibe, answered: 

“Haven’t you got the sense to see we’ve cut all the good timber just round here?” and again he turned his eyes to the horizon line.

“Mac’s right,” said the Boy; and even the Colonel stood still a moment, and they all looked away to that land at the end of the world where the best materials are for the building of castles—­it’s the same country so plainly pointed out by the Rainbow’s End, and never so much as in the springtime does it lure men with its ancient promise.