“Which works hardest, I wonder?” she said at last, as they paused to look down on the scene below.  “We on our farm, or you here?  I’ve never had more than five hours’ sleep through the harvest?  But now things are slacker.”

He threw his head back with a laugh.

“Why, this seems to me like playing at lumbering!  It’s all so tiny—­so babyish.  Oh, yes, there’s plenty of work—­for the moment.  But it’ll be all done, in one more season; not a stick left.  England can’t grow a real forest.”

“Compared to America?”

“Well, I was thinking of Canada.  Do you know Canada?”

“A little.”  Then she added hastily:  “But I never saw any lumbering.”

“What a pity!  It’s a gorgeous life.  Oh, not for women.  These women here—­awfully nice girls, and awfully clever too—­couldn’t make anything of it in Canada.  I had a couple of square miles of forest to look after—­magnificent stuff!—­Douglas fir most of it—­and two pulping mills, and about two hundred men—­a rough lot.”

“But you’re not Canadian?”

“Oh, Lord, no!  My people live in Maine.  I was at Yale.  I got trained at the forest school there, and after a bit went over the Canadian frontier with my brother to work a big concession in Quebec.  We did very well—­made a lot of money.  Then came the war.  My brother joined up with the Canadian army.  I stayed behind to try and settle up the business, till the States went in, too.  Then they set me and some other fellows to raise a Forestry battalion—­picked men.  We went to France first, and last winter I was sent here—­to boss this little show!  But I shan’t stay here long!  It isn’t good enough.  Besides, I want to fight!  They’ve promised me a commission in our own army.”

He looked at her with sparkling eyes, and her face involuntarily answered the challenge of his; so much so that his look prolonged itself.  She was wonderfully pleasant to look upon, this friend of Mrs. Fergusson’s.  And she was farming on her own?  A jolly plucky thing to do!  He decided that he liked her; and his talk flowed on.  He was frank about himself, and full of self-confidence; but there was a winning human note in it, and Rachel listened eagerly, talking readily, too, whenever there was an opening.  They climbed to the top of the hill where they stood on the northern edge of the forest, looking across the basin and the busy throng below.  He pointed out to her a timber-slide to their right, and they watched the trees rushing down it, dragged, as he now saw plainly, by the wire cable which was worked by the engine in the hollow.  A group of German prisoners, half-way down, were on the edge of the slide, guiding the logs.

“We don’t have any trouble with them,” said the captain carelessly.  “They’re only too thankful to be here.  They’ve two corporals of their own who keep order.  Oh, of course we have our eyes open.  There are some sly beggars among them.  Our men have no truck with them.  I shouldn’t advise you to employ them.  It wouldn’t do for women alone.”