“Well,” said the man grimly, as he pointed to the deformation of one lower limb, “I am not fond of it, but it’s about all I’m good for now.  That’s where the axe went in, and anybody but Harry Alton might have fired me.  It was my own blame foolishness, too, but when the doctor told him Harry comes to me.  ’You needn’t worry about one thing, anyway.  There’ll be a job for you just so long as you’re wanting it,’” says he.

“He does that kind of thing sometimes?” said Deringham curiously.

“No, sir,” said the other dryly.  “He does it every time, but the devil himself wouldn’t squeeze ten cents out of Harry if he didn’t want to give it him.  But how long are you going to be stripping that fowl?”

“As I’m afraid it would take me all night, I would prefer to give you a half-a-dollar to do it for me,” said Deringham.

The man straightened himself a little, and Deringham received another surprise.

“Patent medicines and hair-growers are up?” said he.

“I don’t quite understand,” said Deringham quietly.

“No?” said the other.  “Well, you will do presently unless you get right out of this shanty.  I’m fit to make my wages yet, if I’ve only got one handy leg, and I can put my mark on any blame peddler who talks that way to me.”

“I’m sorry,” said Deringham gravely.  “I have, you see, just come from England, where folks are not always so well paid as you seem to be.  I think I will look for Mr. Alton.  Can you tell me where he is?”

The man, who appeared a trifle mollified, pointed to the bush.  “He’s yonder, but if he scares you, you needn’t blame me,” he said.

Deringham picked his way amidst the six-foot fir-stumps girdled with tall fern, over a breadth of white ashes and charcoal where the newly-won land lay waiting for the plough, in and out amidst the chaos of trunks that lay piled athwart each other all round the clearing, and stopped close by three men who were making an onslaught on a majestic tree.  Its topmost sprays towered two hundred feet above them, and the great trunk ran a stupendous column to the vault of dusky green above.  It was, however, the men who most attracted Deringham’s attention, and he stood for a moment watching them.

Two were poised on narrow boards notched into the tree a man’s height from the ground, and one was huge and swarthy, so that the heavy axe he held seemed a toy in his great gnarled hand.  The other, whose figure seemed in some respects familiar, stooped a little with the bright axe blade laid flat in one palm as though he were examining it, and Deringham, who could not see his face, turned towards another who sat at the foot of the tree sharpening a big saw.  His overalls were in tolerable repair, while from an indefinite something in his face and the way he wore them Deringham set him down as an Englishman.  Still, he did not think he was an Alton.

“Can you tell me where Mr. Henry Alton is?” he said.  The young man nodded.  “Harry!” he said.