“Yer well fixed,” he murmured.  “An’ happy as a clam, I reckon?”

“I’d oughter be happy,” said Mamie dubiously.  Then she added hastily, “Never expected to see you in a logging-camp.”

“No?  Wal, I kinder wondered how you was makin’ it.  You don’t look extry peart, Mis’ Barker.  Lonesome for ye, ain’t it?”

Already he knew that except for a few squaws she was the only woman in the camp.

“I don’t mind that,” said Mrs. Barker.

Something in her tone arrested his attention.  Stupid and slow though he was, he divined that Mamie’s thin, white cheeks and trembling hands were not caused by lonesomeness.  He stared at her intently, till the blood gushed into her face.  And then and there he knew almost everything.

“Got a baby?” he asked thickly.

She answered savagely, “No, I haven’t, thank God!”

Above the chimneypiece hung an enlarged photograph of her husband, taken a couple of days after his wedding.  Mr. Barker had faced the camera with the same brutal complacency which distinguished all his actions.  He smiled grimly, thrusting forward his heavy lower jaw, inviting inspection, obviously pleased to exhibit himself as a ferocious and untamed animal.  Through the sleeves of his ill-cut black coat the muscles of his arms and shoulders showed bulgingly.  The ordinary observer, looking at the photograph for the first time, would be likely to reflect:  “Here is a ruffian who needs a licking, but he has not got it yet.”

“How’s paw?” said Mamie.

“Las’ time I seen the old man he was paralysed drunk, as usual.”

“Yes, he would be that,” assented Mamie indifferently.

After this, conversation languished, and very soon the visitor took his leave.  When Mamie handed to him his hat she said awkwardly, “You never told me good-bye”; and to this indictment Dennis replied laconically, “Holy Mackinaw!  I couldn’t.”

Those who know the wilder portions of this planet will understand that all was said between these two weaklings who had loved each other dearly.  Dennis returned to the bunk-house.  Mamie ran to her bed-room and cried her eyes out.

Within a week the camp knew two facts concerning the newcomer.  His name was—­Dennis!  And he had loved Tom Barker’s dough-faced wife!

Tom’s selection of his first instrument of torture indicated subtlety.  He bought from a Siwash Indian the most contemptible-looking cur ever beheld at the inlet, and he christened the unfortunate beast—­Dennis.  There was a resemblance between dog and man.  Each, in the struggle for existence, had received more than his due share of kicks, and the sense of this in any animal manifests itself unmistakably.  And each, moreover, exhibited the same amazing optimism, which is, perhaps, a sure sign of a mind not quite balanced.

Dennis, the dog, followed his new master wherever he went.  Tom would introduce him with the remark, “His name is Dennis, too.”  And if Dennis, the man, happened to be present, Tom would swear at the dog, calling him every evil name which came to the tip of the foulest tongue in British Columbia.  Always, at the end of these commination services, Tom would say to Dennis, the man, “I an’t a-speakin’ to you, old socks, so keep yer hair on.”