Fox turned at once sharply to the left and entered into earnest conversation with a pale, hatchet-faced man of thirty-five, whom he addressed as “Collins.”  In a moment he turned, beckoning Bob forward.

“Here’s a youngster for you, Collins,” said he, evidently continuing former remarks.  “Young Mr. Orde.  He’s been in our home office awhile, but I brought him up to help you out.  He can get busy on your tally sheets and time checks and tally boards, and sort of ease up the strain a little.”

“I can use him, right now,” said Collins, nervously smoothing back a strand of his pale hair.  “Glad to meet you, Mr. Orde.  These ‘jumpers’ ... and that confounded mixed stuff from seventeen ...” he trailed off, his eye glazing in the abstraction of some inner calculation, his long, nervous fingers reaching unconsciously toward the soiled memoranda left by Mason.

“Well, I’ll set you to work,” he roused himself, when he perceived that the two were about to leave him.  And almost before they had time to turn away he was busy at the papers, his pencil, beautifully pointed, running like lightning down the long columns, pausing at certain places as though by instinct, hovering the brief instant necessary to calculation, then racing on as though in pursuit of something elusive.

As they turned away a slow, cool voice addressed them from behind the stove.

“Hullo, bub!” it drawled.

Fox’s face lighted and he extended both hands.

“Well, Tally!” he cried.  “You old snoozer!”

The man was upward of sixty years of age, but straight and active.  His features were tanned a deep mahogany, and carved by the years and exposure into lines of capability and good humour.  In contrast to this brown his sweeping white moustache and bushy eyebrows, blenched flaxen by the sun, showed strongly.  His little blue eyes twinkled, and fine wrinkles at their corners helped the twinkles.  His long figure was so heavily clothed as to be concealed from any surmise, except that it was gaunt and wiry.  Hands gnarled, twisted, veined, brown, seemed less like flesh than like some skilful Japanese carving.  On his head he wore a visored cap with an extraordinary high crown; on his back a rather dingy coat cut from a Mackinaw blanket; on his legs trousers that had been “stagged” off just below the knees, heavy German socks, and shoes nailed with sharp spikes at least three-quarters of an inch in length.

“Thought you were up in the woods!” Fox was exclaiming.  “Where’s Fagan?”

“He’s walkin’ white water,” replied the old man.

“Things going well?”

“Damn poor,” admitted Tally frankly.  “That is to say, the Whitefish branch is off.  There’s trouble with the men.  They’re a mixed lot.  Then there’s old Meadows.  He’s assertin’ his heaven-born rights some more.  It’s all right.  We’re on their backs.  Other branches just about down.”

There followed a rapid exchange of which Bob could make little—­talk of flood water, of “plugging” and “pulling,” of “winging out,” of “white water.”  It made no sense, and yet somehow it thrilled him, as at times the mere roll of Greek names used to arouse in his breast vague emotions of grandeur and the struggle of mighty forces.