The horses having been attended to, the travellers entered the house, where they found Pierre, the proprietor, dozing on his bar; a bloated, blear-eyed creature, who evidently would have much preferred making them drunk with his vile whisky to preparing them any pretence for a dinner. But they firmly declined his liquor, so muttering unintelligibly to himself he shambled off to obey their behests. After some delay they succeeded in getting a miserable meal of some kind; and then, the horses being sufficiently rested, they set off once more at a good pace, not halting again until, just before sundown, they arrived at the depot, where the first stage of their journey ended.
This depot was simply a large farm set in the midst of a wilderness of trees, and forming a centre from which some half-dozen shanties, or lumber camps, placed at different distances in the depths of the forest that stretched away interminably north, south, east, and west, were supplied with all that was necessary for their maintenance. Besides the ordinary farm buildings, there was another which served as a sort of a shop or warehouse, being filled with a stock of axes, saws, blankets, boots, beef, pork, tea, sugar, molasses, flour, and so forth, for the use of the lumbermen. This was Mr. Stewart's headquarters, and as the tired horses drew up before the door he tossed the reins over their backs, saying,--
"Here we are, Frank. You'll stay here until your gang is made up. To-morrow morning I'll introduce you to some of your mates."
Frank looked about him with quick curiosity, expecting to see some of the men in whose society he was to spend the jointer. But there were only the farm-hands lounging listlessly about, their days work being over, and they had nothing to do except to smoke their pipes and wait for nightfall, when they would lounge off to bed.
The shantymen had not yet arrived, Mr. Stewart always making a point of being at the depot some days in advance of them, in order to have plenty of time to prepare his plans for the winter campaign. Noting Frank's inquiring look, he laughed, and said,--
"Oh, there are none of them here yet--we're the first on the field-but by the end of the week there'll be more than a hundred men here."