The man turned.  He gazed back at this unusual vision of a beautiful, well-gowned woman in the heart of the forests.  He grinned ironically, this great, rough-bearded creature, in hard cord clothing, and with his well-worn fur cap pressed low over his lank hair that reached well-nigh to his shoulders.

“Why not?” he demanded roughly.  “Oh, yes.  It’s Skandinavia’s, every mile of it.  An’ I guess there’s hundreds an’ hundreds of ’em.  Ain’t that what Canada’s forests are for?  To feed us the stuff we’re needin’?  But you don’t need to worry any.  We ain’t cuttin’ that stuff for years.  Guess the waterways out there are mostly a mean outfit that wouldn’t raft a bunch of lucifers.  We need to wait permanent railroad for haulage.”

Nancy accepted the statement without reply.  It was impossible to stir a man like Arden Laval to any sort of sympathy.  He was hardened, crude, first, last and all the time.  He was big and brutal.  His limbs were like to the trees his men were accustomed to fell, and his hands reminded her of the hind limbs of the mutton.  She felt he had a mind that matched his physical development.

Nancy McDonald was nearing the end of her third month of forest travel.  The Shagaunty valley lay behind her, desolated by the fierce axe of the men who lived by their slaughter.  She had seen it all.  She had studied the re-afforestation which followed on the heels of the axemen.  And the seeming puerility of this effort to salve the wounds inflicted upon Nature had filled her with pitying contempt.

She knew the whole process of the forest industry by heart now.  It fascinated her.  Oh, yes.  It was picturesque, it was real, vital.  The men on the river driving down to the booms had stirred her greatest admiration.  These supermen with their muscles of iron, with the hearts of lions, and the tongues and habits of beasts of the forest.  But they were men, wonderful men for all their savage crudity.  So, too, with the transporters and freighters handling sixty-foot logs as though dealing with matchwood.  But above all, and before all, the axemen made their appeal.

There was nothing comparable with the rough skill of these creatures.  She had watched the flash and swing of the axe, with its edge like the finest razor.  She had seen the standing muscles like whipcord writhing under sunburnt flesh as they served the lethal weapon.  She had noted every blow, how it was calculated to a hair’s-breadth, and fell without waste of one single ounce of power.  And then the amazing result.  The fallen tree stretched out on the exact spot and in the exact direction ready for the hauliers to bear straight away to the final transport station.

The summer days had been filled with vital interest.  And at night, weary in body, Nancy still had time, lying in the amply, if crudely blanketed bed provided for her in some lumber-built shanty, to contemplate the lives of this strangely assorted race.  She knew the pay of the forest men, from the haulier to the princely axeman and river-jack.  She had seen their food, and their dwelling accommodation.  She had heard such details as were possible of telling of their recreations, and had guessed the rest.  And for all her admiration of their manhood she pitied, in her woman’s way, and felt shame for the slavery of it all.