inquisitive and disagreeable personally, but he has been in the Forest
Service a long time and it hardly seems right not to trust him. He's a
pretty efficient ranger."

"Well, I'm here, anyway," continued Charley. "I came to find out what my
first duties are to be and how to do them."

"There's a little tree planting that simply must be done in your
territory, late though it is," said Mr. Marlin. "To-morrow I shall send
you out with a small crew to do it."

"Please show me just how it ought to be done," said Charley.

The forester smiled with approval. "Come out-of-doors," he said, picking
up a mattock. And he led the way to a bed of seedling spruces that had
been heeled in the ground, and dug up two or three of them.

"These ought to be lifted in small bunches and their roots puddled," he
said, dipping the earth-covered roots in water to show how to puddle them.
"They should be planted thus." He struck his mattock sharply into the
soil, bent it to one side, and in the hole thus opened thrust a tiny tree.
Then he stepped on the ground close to the seedling and pressed the earth
tight about it.

"That's all there is to it," he said. "Your crew will work in pairs, one
man carrying the trees in a pail of water and inserting them in the
ground, while the other man carries the mattock and opens the holes. The
trees should be planted in straight rows and about four feet apart each
way. You will have to go ahead of the crew and set up the line pole. Pick
out some trees or saplings to sight by and you will have no trouble to