It will be guessed that Tom’s principal difficulty was engaging men.  Having engaged them, he was certain to get plenty of work out of them, and they couldn’t leave till they had earned sufficient money to take themselves elsewhere.  All the boys came to Tom stoney-broke; otherwise they would never have “signed on.”  To be treated like a hog, to root assiduously for Tom, or to starve, stared several able-bodied men in the face.  One genial Californian remarked, “It’s a choice between Death and Damnation.”

You will now understand why Tom smiled when Dennis Brown asked for a job.

He knew that Dennis was a cow-puncher, and not a star performer on his own pitch, and he had only to look at the man to realise how unfitted he was for the rough work of a logging-camp.  A derisive chuckle gurgled from his huge, hairy throat as he growled out—­

“Say!  This ain’t like teachin’ Sunday-school.”

“I know it ain’t,” said Dennis cheerfully.  But his heart sank at the mention of the Sunday-school.  Long ago he had taught in a Sunday-school.  It was simply awful to think that the piety of a too ardent youth was now to be held up to the ridicule of the boys.

“I believe your name is—­Dennis?” continued the boss of Barker’s Inlet.

“It is,” our unhappy friend admitted.

“Go up to the bunk-house,” commanded Tom, “and tell Jimmy Doolan, with my regards, to take particler care of yer.  I’ll speak to him later.”  Then, as Dennis was moving off, he added, in a rasping voice:  “You an’ my wife is acquainted, eh?  Wal, when you’ve dropped your blankets, come up to the house and say howdy.”

Dennis went up to the house.  There was one house at the inlet:  a four-roomed frame building with three coats of paint on it and a red roof.  It stood some distance from the collection of shacks and cabins at the mouth of the Coho River, and it overlooked some of the most glorious scenery in the world.  In front stretched the Sound, a silver sea just dimpled by the soft spring breeze.  To right and left, and behind, lay the forest—­that silent land of the North, illimitable as space, everlastingly green when the snows had melted, shadowy, mysterious, terrible!

As Dennis approached the house he heard a terrific sound—­the crash of a felled and falling tree—­some giant who had held his own in the struggle for existence when William the Norman ruled in England.  And then, from all points of the compass, the echoes, in varying cadence, repeated that tremendous, awe-inspiring sound—­the last sobbing cry of a Titan.

A moment later Mamie received him and ushered him into the parlour, where a small piano, a table of shellwork, and crimson plush curtains challenged the interest and curiosity of all who were privileged to behold them.  “Let me take yer hat,” said Mamie.

The hand she held out trembled slightly.  Dennis perceived that she was thinner and paler.