"Oh, they live mostly over the hill in the village, in Ashley. There are lots of old houses there, and once in a while now they even have to build a new one, since the old ones are all filled up. Mr. Bayweather says that before Father and Mother came here to live and really run the mill, that Ashley Street was all full of empty houses, without a light in them, that the old folks had died out of. But now the men have bought them up and live in them. It's just as bright, nights! With windows lighted up all over. Father's had the electric current run over there from the mill, now, and that doesn't cost anything except . . ."
Mr. Welles' curiosity satisfied, he fell back into his old shimmer of content and walked along, hearing Paul's voice only as one of the morning sounds of the newly awakened world.
Presently he was summoned out of this day-dream by a tug at his hand. Paul gave out the word of command, "We turn here, so's to get into the men's short-cut."
This proved to be a hard-trodden path, lying like a loosely thrown-down string, over the hill pasture-land which cut Ashley village off from Crittenden's mill. It was to get around this rough tract that the road had to make so long a detour.
"Oh, I see," said Mr. Welles. "I'd been thinking that it must bother them a lot to come the two miles along the road from the village."
"Sure," said Paul. "Only the ones that have got Fords come that way. This is ever so much shorter. Those that step along fast can make it easy in twelve or fifteen minutes. There they come now, the first of them." He nodded backward along the path where a distant dark line of men came treading swiftly and steadily forward, tin pails glistening in their hands.
"Some of those in that first bunch are really choppers by rights," Paul diagnosed them with a practised eye, "but of course nobody does much chopping come warmer weather. But Father never lays off any men unless they want to be. He fixes some jobs for them in the lumber-yard or in the mill, so they live here all the year around, same's the regular hands."
The two stood still now, watching the men as their long, powerful strides brought them rapidly nearer. Back of them the sun rose up splendid in the sparkling, dustless mountain air. The pasture grass on either side of the sinuous path lay shining in the dew. Before them the path led through a grove of slim, white birches, tremulous in a pale cloud of light green.