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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
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