"Oh, I got that out of a ten-cent magazine too." She sat on a bench, looked up at the sky through the trees, and drew a deep breath.

"You're tired," said Bob.

"Not a bit," she denied. "But I don't often get a chance to just look up."

"You seem to do the gardening, the cooking, the housework, the clerical work-you don't do the laundry, too, do you?" demanded Bob ironically.

"You noticed those miserable khakis!" cried Amy with a gesture of dismay. "Ashley," she called, "change those khakis before you go out."

"Yes, mama," came back a mock childish voice.

"What's your salary?" demanded Bob bluntly, nodding toward the office.

"What?" she asked, as though puzzled. "Didn't you say you were the clerk ?"

"Oh, I see. I just help Ashley out. He could never get through the field work and the office work both." "Doesn't the Service allow him a clerk?"

"Oh, I beg pardon," cried Bob flushing; "I just meant supervisors' salaries, of course. I wasn't prying, really. It's all a matter of public record, isn't it?"

"Of course." The girl checked herself. "Well, it's eighteen hundred — and something for expenses."

"Eighteen hundred!" cried Bob. "Do you mean to say that the two of you give all your time for that? Why, we pay a good woods foreman pretty near that!"

"And that's all you do pay him," said the girl quietly. "Money wage isn't the whole pay for any job that is worth doing."

"Don't understand," said Bob briefly.

"We belong to the Service," she stated with a little move

ment of pride. "Those tasks in life which give a high moneyed wage, generally give only that. Part of our compensation is that we belong to the Service; we are doing something for the whole people, not just for ourselves." She caught Bob's half-smile, more at her carnestness than at her sentiment, and took fire. "You needn't laugh!" she cried. "It's small now, but that's because it's the beginning, because we have the privilege of being the forerunners, the pioneers! The time will come when in this country there will be three great Services the Army, the Navy, the Forest; and an officer in the one will be as much respected and looked up to as the others! Perhaps more! In the long times of peace, while they are occupied with their eternal Preparation, we shall be labouring at Accomplishment.”

She broke off abruptly.

"If you don't want to get me started, don't be superior," she ended, half apologetic, half resentful.

"But I do want to get you started," said Bob.

"It's amusing, I don't doubt."

"Not quite that: it's interesting, and I am no longer bewildered at the eighteen hundred a year - that is," he quoted a popular song, "if there are any more at home like you."" She looked at him humorously despairing.

"That's just like an outsider. There are plenty who feel as I do, but they don't say so. Look at old California John, at Ross Fletcher, at a half-dozen others under your very nose. Have you ever stopped to think why they have so long been loyal? I don't suppose you have, for I doubt if they have. But you mark my words!"

"All right, Field Marshal - or is it 'General'?" said Bob.

She laughed.

"Just camp cook," she replied good-humouredly.

The sun was slanting low through the tall, straight trunks of the trees. Amy Thorne arose, gathered a handful of kindling, and began to rattle the stove.

"I am contemplating a real pudding," she said over her shoulder.

Bob arose reluctantly.

"I must be getting on," said he.

They said farewell. At the hitching rail Thorne joined him. "I'm afraid I'm not very hospitable," said the Supervisor, "but that mustn't discourage you from coming often. We'll be better organized in time."

"It's mighty pleasant over here; I've enjoyed myself," said Bob, mounting.

Thorne laid his hand on the young man's knee.

"I wish we could induce you old-timers to come to our way of thinking," said he pleasantly.

"How's that?" asked Bob.

"Your slash is in horrible shape."

"Our slash!" repeated Bob in a surprised tone.

"How?"

"It's a regular fire-trap, the way you leave it tangled up. It wouldn't cost you much to pile the tops and leave the ground in good shape."

"Why, it's just like any other slash!" protested Bob. "We're logging just as everybody always logs!"

"That's just what I object to. And when you fall a tree or pull a log to the skids, I do wish we could induce you to pay a little attention to the young growth. It's a little more trouble, sometimes, to go around instead of through, but it's worth it to the forest."

Bob's brows were bent on the Supervisor in puzzled surprise. Thorne laughed, and slapped the young man's horse on the flanks to start him.

"You think it over!" he called.

A half-hour's ride took Bob to the clearing where the logging crews had worked the year before. Here, although the hour was now late, he reined in his horse and looked. It was the first time he had ever really done so. Heretofore a slashing had been as much a part of the ordinary woodland landscape as the forest itself.

He saw then the abattis of splintered old trunks, of lopped limbs, and entangled branches, piled up like jackstraws to the height of even six or eight feet from the ground; the unsightly mat of sodden old masses of pine needles and cedar fans; the hundreds of young saplings bent double by the weight of débris, broken square off, or twisted out of all chance of becoming straight trees in their age; the long, deep, ruthless furrows where the logs had been dragged through everything that could stand in their way; the few trees left standing, weak specimens, undesirable species, the culls of the forest, further scarred where the cruel steel cables had rasped or bitten them. He knew by experience the difficulty of making a way, even afoot, through this tangle. Now, under the influence of Thorne's suggestion, he saw them as great piles of so much fuel, laid as though by purpose for the time when the evil genius of the forest should desire to warm himself.

B

II

OB was finally late for supper, which he ate hastily and without much appetite. After finishing the meal,

he hunted up Welton. He found the lumberman tilted back in a wooden armchair, his feet comfortably elevated to the low rail about the stove, his pipe in mouth, his coat off, and his waistcoat unbuttoned. At the sight of his homely, jolly countenance, Bob experienced a pleasant sensation of slipping back from an environment slightly off-focus to the normal, accustomed and real. Nevertheless, at the first opportunity, he tested his new doubts by Welton's common sense. "I rode through our slash on 18," he remarked. "That's an awful mess."

"Slashes are," replied Welton succinctly.

"If the thing gets afire it will make a hot blaze."

"Sure thing," agreed Welton. "But we've never had one go yet at least, while we were working. There's men enough to corral anything like that."

"But we've always worked in a wet country," Bob pointed out. "Here it's dry from April till October."

"Have to take chances, then; and jump on a fire ick if it starts," said Welton philosophically.

"These forest men advise certain methods of obviating the danger," Bob suggested.

"Pure theory," returned Welton. "The theory's a good one, too," he added. "That's where these college men are strong only it isn't practical. They mean well enough, but they haven't the knowledge. When you look at anything broad enough, it looks easy. That's what busts so many people in the lumber business." He rolled out one of his