Joe thought he had never seen a girl so clever, so practical, and so alive with enthusiasm and spirits.

He took the seldom-used road that they had traveled the day before, up past the old Marshall house, and then by a trail down into the woods of the river orchard. That great tract of pine had a very special interest to Joe, for, as he had explained to the Harmans, it had belonged to their family, he had been born on it himself, and with a little good luck it might have been his own that day.

Before the Civil War it had formed part of the great Marshall estate that lay along the river. The property had been huge in area but of little cash value, for most of it was uncleared and uncultivated. Lumber was of no value then; turpentine was not worth much, though Joe’s grandfather had operated a small still somewhere in the woods, shipping turpentine down to Mobile and throwing the rosin away. That had been more than half a century ago, and no one now knew even where the still had been located.

The old-time Marshalls, like many Southern families, had not been thrifty. They sold land recklessly and for a trifle. Joe’s own father had inherited not two thousand acres, of which not one-tenth was under cultivation. Joe could remember the series of bad cotton crops, of too wet summers, of floodings by the river, that had almost ruined his father. At last, weary of hard luck, Mr. Marshall had sold the whole property for six dollars an acre, and moved to Mobile.

No one moved into the old mansion, which fell into decay. The new owner lived forty miles distant. He rented out part of the land, let out part to be farmed for him on shares, and sold to Burnam the tract of pine land toward the river.

When Joe was fifteen his father had died. The boy had neither sisters nor brothers, and his mother had been dead eight years. Almost his only link with humanity was his uncle Louis Marshall, and the negro boy Sam, who had come to Mobile with the family.

Joe had inherited three thousand dollars—all that was left of the once splendid Marshall property. He was graduated shortly afterwards from the Mobile Academy, and became much attracted by the turpentine business. He did not care for the city; he had been brought up in the woods, and they called to him. When Uncle Louis, who was trustee of his money, mentioned that he might put it into Burnam’s new camp, with the additional inducement of a job as woods-rider at seventy-five dollars a month, the boy was enthusiastic. It was as much his fault as 

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