第52章

"But I ain't foolin', Ma. Mr. Cameron is our new hand. He'll knock yeh off a few sticks in no time." So saying, Haley walked off with his pails to the milking, leaving his wife and the new hand facing each other, each uncertain as to the next move.

"What can I do, Mrs. Haley?" enquired Cameron politely.

"Oh, I don't know," said Mrs. Haley wearily. "I want a few sticks for the breakfast, but perhaps I can get along with chips, but chips don't give no steady fire."

"If you would show me just what to do," said Cameron with some hesitation, "I mean, where is the wood to be got?"

"There," she said, in a surprised tone, pointing to a pile of long logs of ash and maple. "I don't want much." She gathered her apron full of chips and turned away, all too obviously refusing to place her hope of wood for the breakfast fire upon the efforts of the new man. Cameron stood looking alternately at the long, hard, dry logs and at the axe which he had picked up from the bed of chips. The problem of how to produce the sticks necessary to breakfast by the application of the one to the other was one for which he could see no solution. He lifted his axe and brought it down hard upon a maple log. The result was a slight indentation upon the log and a sharp jar from the axe handle that ran up his arm unpleasantly. A series of heavy blows produced nothing more than a corresponding series of indentations in the tough maple log and of jars more or less sharp and painful shooting up his arms.

The result was not encouraging, but it flashed upon him that this was his first attempt to make good at his job on the farm. He threw off his coat and went at his work with energy; but the probability of breakfast, so far as it depended upon the result of his efforts, seemed to be growing more and more remote.

"Guess ye ain't got the knack of it," said a voice, deep, full, and mellow, behind him. "That axe ain't no good for choppin', it's a splittin' axe."

Turning, he saw a girl of about seventeen, with little grace and less beauty, but strongly and stoutly built, and with a good-natured, if somewhat stupid and heavy face. Her hair was dun in colour, coarse in texture, and done up loosely and carelessly in two heavy braids, arranged about her head in such a manner as to permit stray wisps of hair to escape about her face and neck.

She was dressed in a loose pink wrapper, all too plainly of home manufacture, gathered in at the waist, and successfully obliterating any lines that might indicate the existence of any grace of form, and sadly spotted and stained with grease and dirt. Her red stout arms ended in thick and redder hands, decked with an array of black-rimmed nails. At his first glance, sweeping her "tout ensemble," Cameron was conscious of a feeling of repulsion, but in a moment this feeling passed and he was surprised to find himself looking into two eyes of surprising loveliness, dark blue, well shaped, and of such liquid depths as to suggest pools of water under forest trees.

"They use the saw mostly," said the girl.

"The saw?" echoed Cameron.

"Yes," she said. "They saw 'em through and then split 'em with the axe."

Cameron picked up the buck-saw which lay against a rickety saw horse. Never in his life had he used such an instrument. He gazed helplessly at his companion.

"How do you use this thing?" he enquired.

"Say! are you funny," replied the girl, flashing a keen glance upon him, "or don't ye know?"

"Never saw it done in my life," said Cameron solemnly.

"Here!" she cried, "let me show you."

She seized the end of a maple log, dragged it forward to the rickety saw horse, set it in position, took the saw from his hands, and went at her work with such vigour that in less than a minute as it seemed to Cameron she had made the cut.

"Give me that axe!" she said impatiently to Cameron, who was preparing to split the block.

With a few strong and skillful blows she split the straight-grained block of wood into firewood, gathered up the sticks in her arms, and, with a giggle, turned toward the house.

"I won't charge you anything for that lesson," she said, "but you'll have to hustle if you git that wood split 'fore breakfast."

"Thank you," said Cameron, grateful that none of the men had witnessed the instruction, "I shall do my best," and for the next half hour, with little skill, but by main strength, he cut off a number of blocks from the maple log and proceeded to split them.

But in this he made slow progress. From the kitchen came cheerful sounds and scents of cooking, and ever and anon from the door waddled, with quite surprising celerity, the unwieldy bulk of the mistress of the house.

"Now, that's jest like yer Pa," Cameron heard her grumbling to her daughter, "bringin' a man here jest at the busy season who don't know nothin'. He's peckin' away at 'em blocks like a rooster peckin' grain."

"He's willin' enough, Ma," replied the girl, "and I guess he'll learn."

"Learn!" puffed Mrs. Haley contemptuously. "Did ye ever see an old-country man learn to handle an axe or a scythe after he was growed up? Jest look at 'im. Thank goodness! there's Tim."

"Here, Tim!" she called from the door, "best split some o' that wood 'fore breakfast."

Tim approached Cameron with a look of pity on his face.

"Let me have a try," he said. Cameron yielded him the axe. The boy set on end the block at which Cameron had been laboring and, with a swift glancing blow of the axe, knocked off a slab.

"By Jove!" exclaimed Cameron admiringly, "how did you do that?"

For answer the boy struck again the same glancing blow, a slab started and, at a second light blow, fell to the ground.

"I say!" exclaimed Cameron again, "I must learn that trick."

"Oh, that's easy!" said Tim, knocking the slabs off from the outside of the block. "This heart's goin' to be tough, though; got a knot in it," and tough it proved, resisting all his blows.