y, they'll do first-rate. I'd only advise you to chop up
more. I feel like eating all that myself;' and, trencher on knee, they
dined with real backwood appetites.

A shelter for the night was the next consideration. Mr. Holt constituted
himself architect, and commenced operations by lashing a pole across
two trees at about his own height; the others cut sticks and shrubs for
roofing. Three young saplings sloped back to the ground as principal
rafters, and on these were laid a thatch of brushwood; the open ends of
the hut were filled with the same material.

'Now,' said Sam Holt, contemplating the work of his hands with
professional pride, 'when we have a big fire built in front, and a
lot of hemlock brush to lie on, we shall be pretty comfortable.'

And he instructed his novices further in the art of making their couch
luxuriously agreeable, by picking the hemlock fine, and spreading over
it a buffalo skin. Sam Holt had evidently become acquainted with
'considerable' bush lore at his University of Toronto.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE YANKEE STOREKEEPER.

Three men stood with their axes amid the primeval forest. Vast trunks
rose around them to an altitude of thirty or even fifty feet without
a bough; above, 'a boundless contiguity of shade,' and below, a dense
undergrowth of shrubs, which seemed in some places impenetrable jungle.
Three axes against thirty thousand trees. The odds were immensely in the
dryads' favour; the pines and hardwoods might have laughed in every leaf
at the puny power threatening their immemorial empire, and settled that
_vis inertiae_ alone must overcome.

If, as Tennyson has bestowed upon the larkspur ears, the higher vegetation
can listen also, the following conversation would that day have been
heard from the triad of axe-men beginning their campaign against the
forest, and 'bating no jot of heart or hope' in the contest.

'Here's the site for your shanty,' said Mr. Holt, dealing a blow on a
fine maple before him, which left a white scar along the bark. 'It has
the double advantage of being close to this fine spring creek, and
sufficiently near the concession line.'

'And I'm sanguine enough to believe that there will be a view at some
future period,' added Robert, 'when we have hewed through some hundred
yards of solid timber in front. By the way, Holt, why are all the
settlers' locations I have yet seen in the country so destitute of wood
about them? A man seems to think it his du