He cut wood many days that winter when the other men thought the weather too severe and sat huddled over their fires in their homes, shoving their chairs this and that way at their wives' commands, or else formed chewing and gossiping rings within the glowing radius of the red-hot store stove.
"See Barney Thayer goin' cross lots with his axe as I come by," one said to another, rolling the tobacco well back into his grizzled cheek.
"Works as if he was possessed," was the reply, in a half-inarticulate, gruff murmur.
"Well, he can if he wants to," said still another.

"I ain't goin' to work out-doors in any such weather as this for nobody, not if I know it, an' I've got a wife an' eight children, an' he ain't got nobody." And the man cast defiant eyes at the great store-windows, dim with thick blue sheaves of frost.
On a day like that Barney seemed to be hewing asunder not only the sturdy fibres of oak and hemlock, but the terrible sinews of frost and winter, and many a tree seemed to rear itself over him threatening stiffly like an old man of death.

Only by fierce contest, as it were, could he keep himself alive, but he had a certain delight in working in the swamp during those awful arctic days.

The sense that he could still fight and conquer something, were it only the simple destructive force of nature, aroused in him new self-respect.
Through snow-storms Barney plunged forth to the swamp, and worked all day in the thick white slant of the storm, with the snow heaping itself upon his bowed shoulders.
People prophesied that he would kill himself; but he kept on day after day, and had not even a cold until February.

Then there came a south rain and a thaw, and Barney went to the swamp and worked two days knee-deep in melting snow.