"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.
Then the man on the plank above turned round, and Deringham felt inclined to gasp as he stood face to face with the new heir to Carnaby. The man was grimed with dust and ashes. His blue shirt rolled back to the shoulders left uncovered arms that were corded like a smith's, and was rent at the neck so that Deringham could see the finely-arched chest. The overalls, tight-belted round the waist, set off the solidity of his shoulders and the leanness of the flank, while with the first glance at his face Deringham recognized the teamster who had driven them through the bush.
He stood poised on the few inches of springy redwood looking down upon him with a grimly humorous twinkle in his eyes, but through the smears of perspiration and the charcoal grime Deringham now recognized the expression of quiet forcefulness and the directness of gaze which was his birthright.
"Mr. Henry Alton?" he said.
"Yes," said the other quietly.