Where's the axe?
I'll do some fancy one-handed woodchopping." And while Ba'tiste watched, grinning, Barry went about his task, swinging the axe awkwardly, but whistling with the joy of work.

Nor did he pause to diagnose his light-heartedness.

He only knew that he was in the hills; that the streets and offices and people of the cities, and the memories that they carried, had been left behind for him that he was in a new world to make a new fight and that he was strangely, inordinately happy Time after time the axe glinted, to descend upon the chopping block, until at last the pile of stovewood had reached its proper dimensions, and old Ba'tiste came from the doorway to carry it in.

Then, half an hour later, they sat down to their meal of sizzling bacon and steaming coffee,--a great, bearded giant and the younger man whom he, in a moment of impulsiveness, had all but adopted.

Ba'tiste was still joking about the visit of Medaine, Houston parrying his thrusts.