now a compact roll,
rolled down a little slope, crackling and blazing by the way.

Caleb got up and looked at the blazing mass a minute or two, in despair;
but finding that it kept on burning, his eye suddenly brightened, and he
said aloud,

"I'll poke it up."

So he looked around for a stick. He readily found one, and began to push
the blazing roll up the acclivity; but as fast as he pushed it up, it
rolled down again, and all his efforts were consequently vain.

"O dear me!" said Caleb, at length throwing down his stick, "what
_shall_ I do?"

In the meantime the roll continued blazing, and Caleb, looking at it
steadily, observed that it was hollow.

"Ah," said he, "I'll _stick_ him."

So he took up his stick again, and tried to thrust the end of the stick
_into_ the roll. After one or two ineffectual attempts, he succeeded,
though by this time the bark was pretty well burnt through, and was all
ready to fall to pieces. He, however, succeeded in raising it into the
air, upon the end of his pole; but before he got it to the hollow tree,
it dropped off again in several blazing fragments, which continued to
burn a moment upon the ground, and then went out entirely.

Caleb then went to Raymond, and told him that he could not make his fire
burn.

"O you must not come to me, youngster; you promised not to trouble me
with it," said Raymond, as he hooked the chain around the butt-end of
another tree.

"But I thought I could make it burn."

"Well, what's the matter with it? But stand back, for I am going to
start this tree along."

"Why the bark all curls up and burns my hand," said Caleb, retreating at
the same time out of the way of the top of Raymond's tree.

The oxen started along, dragging the tree, and Caleb followed, trying to
get an opportunity to speak once more to Raymond. Raymond, however, went
calling aloud to his oxen, and directing them here and there with his
"Gee, Star," and his "Ha, Lion," and his "Wo up, Whoa".

At length, however, he had the tree in its place, and seeing Caleb
standing at a little distance patiently, he asked him again,

"What do you say is the matter with your fire, Caleb?"

"Why, the birch bark curls up and burns me: I wish you would come and
set it a-fire."

"No," said Raymond, walking along by the side of his oxen; "I must not
leave my work to help you play; but I will tell you three ways to carry
the fire, and you can manage it in one or the other of them."

So s