his orders. He and his crew had been expected. Men were hustling food
onto the tables. There were great pans heaped with steaming baked beans,
dark with molasses sweetening, gobbets of white pork flecking the
mounds. Truncated cones of brownbread smoked here and there on platters.
Cubes of gingerbread were heaped high in wooden bowls, and men went
along the tables filling the pannikins with hot tea. The kitchen was in
a leanto, and the cook was pulling tins of hot biscuits from the oven.
There was not a woman in sight about "The Barracks." There had been none
for years. Those men in the dirty canvas aprons were maids, cooks, and
housekeepers.

It was hospitality rude and lavish. That low, dark room with its tiers
of bunks along the four sides, its heaped tables, its air of
uncalculated plenty, housed the recrudescence of feudalism in Yankee
surroundings. And the lord of the manor set his jug at one end of the
table and ordered the big boss to pipe all hands to grog.

"A pretty good lot, Ben," he commented as they crowded around. "And this
here is something in the way of appreciation."

"Mr. Harlan coming out here to meet me, or am I going in and hunt him
up?" inquired Kyle. "I suppose he has located most of the operations for
next season."

"You'll take them in. Harlan won't be out for a while." He turned and
walked away, the chairman with him.

"Your grandson seems to be as much in love with the woods as ever,"
commented Presson. "But I shouldn't think you'd want him to associate
with this kind of cattle all his life, herding Canuck goats on a logging