which they live. Even then it
is quite as likely that the measures will appear to have been struck
small, as that the measured will show in their true grandeur of
proportion. The eye refuses to be convinced off-hand that its education
has been faulty.

"Now," said Welton decidedly. "We may as well have it over with right
now. How big is that young tree over there?"

He pointed out a half-grown specimen of sugar pine.

"About twenty inches in diameter," replied Bob promptly.

Welton silently handed him a tape line. Bob descended.

"Thirty-seven!" he cried with vast astonishment, when his measurements
were taken and his computations made.

"Now that one," commanded Welton, indicating a larger tree.

Bob sized it up.

"No fair looking at the other for comparison," warned the older man.

"Forty," hesitated Bob, "and I don't believe it's that!" he added. "Four
feet," he amended when he had measured.

"Climb in," said Welton; "now you're in a proper frame of mind to listen
to me with respect. The usual run of tree you see down through here is
from five to eight feet in diameter. They are about all over two hundred
feet tall, and some run close to three hundred."

Bob sighed. "All right. Drive on. I'll get used to it in time." His face
lighted up with a grin. "Say, wouldn't you like to see Roaring Dick
trying to handle one of those logs with a peavie? As for driving a
stream full of them! Oh, Lord! You'd have to send 'em down one at a
time, fitted out with staterooms for the crew, a rudder and a gasoline
engine!"

The ponies jogged cheerfully along the winding road. Water ran
everywhere, or stood in pools. Under the young spruces were the last
snowbanks. Pushing up through the wet soil, already showed early
snowplants, those strange, waxlike towers of crimson. After a time they
came to a sidehill where the woods thinned. There still stood many
trees, but as the buckboard approached, Bob could see that they were
cedars, or spruce, or smaller specimens of the pines. Prone upon the
ground, like naked giants, gleamed white and monstrous the peeled bodies
of great trees. A litter of "slash," beaten down by the winter, cumbered
the ground, and retained beneath its faded boughs soggy and melting
drifts.

"Had some 'fallers' in here last year," explained Welton briefly.
"Thought we'd have some logs on hand when it came time to start up."

"Wait a minute," requested Bob. He sprang lightly from the vehicle, and
scramb