uilding, with a heavy leathern bag of tools strapped round his
neck, and his canvas breeches girt above his knees. But the foreman
staid inside to hand him the needful material into the wheel.

The Sawyer waded merrily down the shallow blue water, for he was always
like a boy when he was at work, and he waved his little skull-cap to me,
and swung himself up into the wheel, as if he were nearer seventeen than
seventy. And presently I could only see his legs and arms as he fell to
work. Therefore I also fell to work, with my best attempts at penciling,
having been carefully taught enough of drawing to know that I could not
draw. And perhaps I caught from the old man's presence and the sound of
his activity that strong desire to do my best which he seemed to impart
to every one.

At any rate, I was so engrossed that I scarcely observed the changing
light, except as a hindrance to my work and a trouble to my distance,
till suddenly some great drops fell upon my paper and upon my hat, and
a rush of dark wind almost swept me from the log upon which I sat. Then
again all was a perfect calm, and the young leaves over the stream hung
heavily on their tender foot-stalks, and the points of the breeze-swept
grass turned back, and the ruffle of all things smoothed itself. But
there seemed to be a sense of fear in the waiting silence of earth and
air.

This deep, unnatural stillness scared me, and I made up my mind to
run away. But the hammer of the Sawyer sounded as I had never heard it
sound. He was much too hard at work to pay any heed to sky or stream,
and the fall of his strokes was dead and hollow, as if the place
resented them.

"Come away, come away," I cried, as I ran and stood on the opposite bank
to him; "there is something quite wrong in the weather, I am sure. I
entreat you to come away at once, Uncle Sam. Every thing is so strange
and odd."

"Why, what's to do now?" asked the Sawyer, coming to my side of the
wheel and looking at me, with his spectacles tilted up, and his apron
wedged in a piece of timber, and his solid figure resting in the
impossibility of hurry. "Missy, don't you make a noise out there. You
can't have your own way always."

"Oh, Uncle Sam, don't talk like that. I am in such a fright about you.
Do come out and look at the mountains."

"I have seen the mountains often enough, and I am up to every trick of
them. There may be a corn or two of rain; no more. My sea-weed was like
tinder. There can'