"I'm a frame-carpenter," answered the new arrival. "Got fired from the Hastings saw-mill when work slacked down. Couldn't find anybody who wanted me at Vancouver, so I struck out for the mountains and mines. Found worse luck up here; spent all my money and wore my clothes out, but the boss of the Orchard Mill, who took me for a few days, said I might tell you he recommended me. I'm about played out with getting here, and I'm mighty hungry."
Geoffrey looked the man over, and decided there was truth in the latter part of his story. "Take this spanner and wade across to the reef yonder," he said. "You can begin by giving aid to those men who are bolting the beams down."
The stranger glanced dubiously at the rush of icy water, thick with jagged cakes of frozen snow, then at his dilapidated foot gear, and hesitated. "I'm not great at swimming. It looks deep," he objected.
"You can walk, I suppose," Geoffrey answered. "If you do, it won't drown you."
The man prepared to obey. He had reached the edge of the water when Geoffrey called him. "I see you're willing, and I'll take you for a few weeks any way," he said. "In the meantime a rest wouldn't do you much harm, and the cook might find you something to keep you from starving until supper, if you asked him civilly."
"Thanks!" the man answered, with a curious expression in his face. "I am a bit used up, and I guess I'll see the cook."
Work proceeded until the winter's dusk fell, when a bountiful supper was served. The stranger, who did full justice to the meal, showed himself a capable hand when work was resumed under the flaring light of several huge lamps. That night two of his new comrades sat in the cook-shed discussing the stranger. One was James Gillow, whom Geoffrey had first employed at Helen's suggestion, and now replaced the man he formerly assisted. He was apparently without ambition, and chiefly remarkable for an antipathy to physical effort. Although he had a good education, he found that cooking suited him. He sat upon an overturned bucket discoursing whimsically, while Mattawa Tom, who acted as Thurston's foreman, peeled potatoes for him. The cook-shanty was warm and snug, and Gillow made those to whom he granted the right of entry work for the privilege.
"Strikes me as queer," said the big axeman, with a grin, when the cook halted to refill his pipe. "Strikes me as queer, it does, that some of you fellows who know so much kin do so little. Knowledge ain't worth a cent unless you've got the rustle. Now there's the boss. You talk the same talk, an' he can't well know more than you seem to do, but look where he is, while you stop right down at the bottom running a cook-shanty. Guess you were born tired, English Jim."
"I dare say you're right," answered Gillow. "Other folks in the Old Country have said the same thing, though they didn't put it so neatly. The fact is, some men, like Thurston, are born to wear themselves out trying to manage things, while I was intended for philosophic contemplation. He's occasionally hard to get on with, but since I came here, I'm willing to acknowledge that men of his species are useful, and I have struck harder masters in this great Dominion."
Mattawa Tom laughed hoarsely as he responded: "I should say! You found him hard the day you ran black lines all over his drawings and nearly burnt his shanty up, trying to prove he didn't know his business, when you was brim-full of Red Pine whiskey."