“Mam,” he said, with a grin that was almost hateful, “if I was to start in to hand you the life history of a lumber-jack you’d feel like throwing up your kind heart, and any other old thing you hadn’t use for in your stummick.  But I guess I can say right here, a lumber-jack’s a most disgustin’ sort of vermin who hasn’t more right than a louse to figger in your reckonin’.  I guess he was born wrong, and he’ll mostly die as he was born.  And meanwhile he’s lived a life that’s mostly dirt, and no account anyway.  There’s a few things we ask of a lumber-jack, and if he fulfils ’em right he can go right on living.  When he can’t fulfil ‘em, why, it’s up to him to hit the trail for the pay box, an’ get out.  Guess you feel good when you see a boy swingin’ an axe, or handlin’ a peavy.  Sure.  That sort of thing don’t come your way often.  Neither does it come your way to see the rest.  He’s mostly a sink of filth in mind and body, and if he ain’t all that at the start he gets it quick.  He’s a waster of God’s pure air, and is mostly in his right surroundings when the forest does its best to hide him up from the eyes of the rest of the world.  Guess he’s the best man I know—­dead.”

For all his grin Arden Laval was in deadly earnest.  Nancy stared at the broad back he had turned on her with his final word.  And her indignation surged.

“I don’t believe it,” she cried.  “I can’t believe it.  You’re just talking out of years of experience of a life you’ve probably learned to hate.  Man, if that’s your opinion of your fellows, then it’s you who ought never to leave the forest you claim does its best to hide up folk from the eyes of the rest of the world.  You’re a camp boss.  You’re our head man in these forests.  You’re trusted, and we know your skill.  Well, it seems to me you’ve a duty that goes further than just feeding the booms right.  You’ve a moral duty towards these men you condemn.  You can help them.  It should surely be your pride to lift them out of the desperate mire you claim they are floundering in.  I’ll not believe you mean it all.”

The man turned away as a black-clothed figure emerged from the trees, and came to a stand at the brink of the ravine some hundred and more yards to the east of them.  Nancy, too, beheld the lonely figure and she, too, became interested in its movements.

The lumber boss laughed shortly, roughly, and raised an arm, pointing as he turned a grinning face to the girl.

“See him, there?” he cried.  “Say, mam, with all respect, I’d say to you, if you’re feeling the way you talk, and look to get the sort of stuff you’d maybe fancy hearing, that’s the guy you need to open out to.  As you say, I’m the head camp-boss on the Skandinavia’s limits.  I’ve had nigh twenty years an’ more experience of the lumber-jack.  An’ I’m tellin’ you the things any camp-boss speakin’ truth’ll tell you.  That’s all, I don’t hate the boys.  I don’t pity ’em.  But I don’t love ’em.