we are on the edge of the timber. _A_ is your first tree. _B_ is
the one where we are. Now if the bearings are correct, and I run two
lines accordingly, the place where they meet will be the place for your
corner stake; say at _C_."

"That looks cute; I like the shape of that!" said the old man,
interested.

[Illustration: SETTING THE STAKES.]

"If the distance was short,--feet instead of rods,--all the instruments
we should want," said the young surveyor, with his peculiarly bright
smile, "would be a foot measure and two strings."

[Illustration]

"How so?" said the old man, who could not believe that science was as
simple a thing as that.

"Why, for instance, we will say the tree _A_ is eighteen feet from the
corner you want to find; _B_, sixteen feet. Now take a string eighteen
feet long, and fasten the end of it by a nail to the centre of the
blazed trunk, _A_; fasten another sixteen feet long to _B_; then stretch
out the loose ends of both until they just meet; and there is the place
for your stake."

"I declar'!" exclaimed the old man. "That's the use of the tew trees.
Banged if I dew see, though, how you're gwine to git along by runnin' a
line from jest one."

"If I run two lines, as I have shown you, where they meet will be the
point. Now if I run one line, and measure it, I shall find the point
where the other line ought to meet it. We'll see. Here on my compass is
a circle and a scale of degrees, which shows me how to set it according
to the bearings. Now look through these sights, and you are looking
straight in the direction of your section corner."

"Curi's, ain't it?" grinned the old man. "'Cordin' to that, my corner is
out on the perairie, jest over beyant that ar knoll."

"You're right. Now go forward to the top of it, while I sight you, and
we'll set a stake there. As I signal with my hands this way, or this,
move your stake to the right or left, till I make _this_ motion; then
you are all right."

The young surveyor had got his compass into position, by looking back
through the sights at the tree. He now placed himself between it and the
tree, and, sighting forward, directed the old man, who went on over the
knoll, where to set his stakes.

On the other side of the knoll, it was found that the line crossed a
slough,--or "slew," as the old man termed it,--which lay in a long,
winding hollow of the hills. This morass was partly filled with stagnant
water; and the old man gave it a bad nam