“It’s because you are scarcely more than a boy, and this will be a trying job for a work-hardened man,” answered McLean.  “You see, in the first place, you would be afraid.  In stretching our lines, we killed six rattlesnakes almost as long as your body and as thick as your arm.  It’s the price of your life to start through the marshgrass surrounding the swamp unless you are covered with heavy leather above your knees.

“You should be able to swim in case high water undermines the temporary bridge we have built where Sleepy Snake Creek enters the swamp.  The fall and winter changes of weather are abrupt and severe, while I would want strict watch kept every day.  You would always be alone, and I don’t guarantee what is in the Limberlost.  It is lying here as it has lain since the beginning of time, and it is alive with forms and voices.  I don’t pretend to say what all of them come from; but from a few slinking shapes I’ve seen, and hair-raising yells I’ve heard, I’d rather not confront their owners myself; and I am neither weak nor fearful.

“Worst of all, any man who will enter the swamp to mark and steal timber is desperate.  One of my employees at the south camp, John Carter, compelled me to discharge him for a number of serious reasons.  He came here, entered the swamp alone, and succeeded in locating and marking a number of valuable trees that he was endeavoring to sell to a rival company when we secured the lease.  He has sworn to have these trees if he has to die or to kill others to get them; and he is a man that the strongest would not care to meet.”

“But if he came to steal trees, wouldn’t he bring teams and men enough:  that all anyone could do would be to watch and be after you?” queried the boy.

“Yes,” replied McLean.

“Then why couldn’t I be watching just as closely, and coming as fast, as an older, stronger man?” asked Freckles.

“Why, by George, you could!” exclaimed McLean.  “I don’t know as the size of a man would be half so important as his grit and faithfulness, come to think of it.  Sit on that log there and we will talk it over.  What is your name?”

Freckles shook his head at the proffer of a seat, and folding his arms, stood straight as the trees around him.  He grew a shade whiter, but his eyes never faltered.

“Freckles!” he said.

“Good enough for everyday,” laughed McLean, “but I scarcely can put ‘Freckles’ on the company’s books.  Tell me your name.”

“I haven’t any name,” replied the boy.

“I don’t understand,” said McLean.

“I was thinking from the voice and the face of you that you wouldn’t,” said Freckles slowly.  “I’ve spent more time on it than I ever did on anything else in all me life, and I don’t understand.  Does it seem to you that anyone would take a newborn baby and row over it, until it was bruised black, cut off its hand, and leave it out in a bitter night on the steps of a charity home, to the care of strangers?  That’s what somebody did to me.”