He put away his handkerchief, took up his rifle, settled his hat, and strode off toward the camp.  Her attention now diverted from the Siwashes, she watched him, saw him go to her brother’s quarters, stand in the door a minute, then go back to the beach accompanied by Charlie.

In a minute or so he came rowing across in a skiff, threw his deer aboard, and pulled away north along the shore.

She watched him lift and fall among the waves until he turned a point, rowing with strong, even strokes.  Then she walked home.  Benton was poring over some figures, but he pushed aside his pencil and paper when she entered.

“You had a visitor, I see,” she remarked.

“Yes, Jack Fyfe.  He picked up a deer on the ridge behind here and borrowed a boat to get home.”

“I saw him come out of the woods,” she said.  “His camp can’t be far from here, is it?  He only left the Springs as you came in.  Does he hunt deer for sport?”

“Hardly.  Oh, well, I suppose it’s sport for Jack, in a way.  He’s always piking around in the woods with a gun or a fishing rod,” Benton returned.  “But we kill ’em to eat mostly.  It’s good meat and cheap.  I get one myself now and then.  However, you want to keep that under your hat—­about us fellows hunting—­or we’ll have game wardens nosing around here.”

“Are you not allowed to hunt them?” she asked.

“Not in close season.  Hunting season’s from September to December.”

“If it’s unlawful, why break the law?” she ventured hesitatingly.  “Isn’t that rather—­er—­”

“Oh, bosh,” Charlie derided.  “A man in the woods is entitled to venison, if he’s hunter enough to get it.  The woods are full of deer, and a few more or less don’t matter.  We can’t run forty miles to town and back and pay famine prices for beef every two or three days, when we can get it at home in the woods.”

Stella digested this in silence, but it occurred to her that this mild sample of lawlessness was quite in keeping with the men and the environment.  There was no policeman on the corner, no mechanism of law and order visible anywhere.  The characteristic attitude of these woodsmen was of intolerance for restraint, of complete self-sufficiency.  It had colored her brother’s point of view.  She perceived that whereas all her instinct was to know the rules of the game and abide by them, he, taking his cue from his environment, inclined to break rules that proved inconvenient, even to formulate new ones to apply.

“And suppose,” said she, “that a game warden should catch you or Mr. Jack Fyfe killing deer out of season?”

“We’d be hauled up and fined a hundred dollars or so,” he told her.  “But they don’t catch us.”

He shrugged his shoulders, and smiling tolerantly upon her, proceeded to smoke.

Dusk was falling now, the long twilight of the northern seasons gradually deepening, as they sat in silence.  Along the creek bank arose the evening chorus of the frogs.  The air, now hushed and still, was riven every few minutes by the whir of wings as ducks in evening flight swept by above.  All the boisterous laughter and talk in the bunkhouse had died.  The woods ranged gloomy and impenetrable, save only in the northwest, where a patch of sky lighted by diffused pink and gray revealed one mountain higher than its fellows standing bald against the horizon.