At the rear of the boiler a boy of eighteen toiled with an axe, chopping into appropriate lengths the dead wood brought in for fuel.  Next year it would be possible to utilize old tops for this purpose, but now they were too green.  Another boy, in charge of a solemn mule, tramped ceaselessly back and forth between the engine and a spring that had been dug out down the hill in a ravine.  Before the end of that summer they had worn a trail so deep and hard and smooth that many seasons of snow failed to obliterate it even from the soft earth.  On either side the mule were slung sacks of heavy canvas.  At the spring the boy filled these by means of a pail.  Returned to the engine, he replenished the boiler, draining the sacks from the bottom, cast a fleeting glance at the water gauge of the donkey engine, and hastened back to the spring.  He had charge of three engines; and was busy.

And back along the line of the chutes were other men to fill out this crew of many activities—­old men to signal; young men to stand by with slush brush, axe, or bar when things did not go well; axe-men with teams laying accurately new chutes into new country yet untouched.

Bob found plenty to keep him busy.  Post, the woods foreman, was a good chute man.  By long experience he had gained practical knowledge of the problems and accidents of this kind of work.  To get the logs out from the beds in which they lay, across a rugged country, and into the mill was an engineering proposition of some moment.  It is easy to get into difficulties from which hours of work will not extricate.

But a man involved closely in the practical management of a saw log may conceivably possess scant leisure to correlate the scattered efforts of such divergent activities.  The cross cutters and swampers may get ahead of the fellers and have to wait in idleness until the latter have knocked down a tree.  Or the donkey may fall silent from lack of logs to haul; or the chute crews may smoke their pipes awaiting the donkey.  Or, worst and unpardonable disgrace of all, the mill may ran out of logs!  When that happens, the Old Fellow is usually pretty promptly on the scene.

Now it is obvious that if somewhere on the works ten men are always waiting—­even though the same ten men are not thus idle over once a week—­the employer is paying for ten men too many.  Bob found his best activity lay in seeing that this did not happen.  He rode everywhere reviewing the work; and he kept it shaken together.  Thus he made himself very useful, he gained rapidly a working knowledge of this new kind of logging, and, incidentally, he found his lines fallen in very pleasant places indeed.

The forest never lost its marvel to him, but after he had to some extent become accustomed to the immense trees, he began to notice the smaller affairs of the woodland.  The dogwoods and azaleas were beginning to come out; the waxy, crimson snow plants were up; the tiny green meadows near the heads of streams were enamelled with flowers; hundreds of species of birds sang and flashed and scratched and crept and soared.  The smaller animals were everywhere.  The sun at noon disengaged innumerable and subtle tepid odours of pine and blossom.