With the side of an axe for an anvil, and the hatchet for a hammer,
Sam was soon very busy forging his wrought nails into sharp arrow
points, holding the hot iron in his wooden pincers. Among the things
that Sam had thought it worth while to learn something about, was
blacksmithing, and he was really expert in the simpler arts of the
smith. He could shoe a horse, "point" a plow, or weld iron or steel,
very well indeed.

He had learned this as he had learned a good many other things, merely
because he thought that every young man should know how to do
tolerably well whatever he might sometime need to do, and in a new
country where shops are scarce and workmen are not always to be found,
there is no mechanical art which it is not sometimes very convenient
to know something about.

Sam wrought now so expertly that within less than an hour he had made
six arrow points. These he fitted to six of the arrows, and then he
suspended work for the evening, and marked progress on his map; that
is to say, he pricked on his map with a pin the course followed during
the afternoon, estimating the distance travelled as accurately as he
could.




CHAPTER VIII.

A MOTION WHICH WAS NOT IN ORDER.