his taste, he found himself near the actual scene of operation, at
the front, as it were. He had under his very eyes the process as
far as it had been carried.

In his experience here he made use of the same searching analytical
observation that had so quickly taught him the secret of the ax-
swing. He knew that each of the things he saw, no matter how
trivial, was either premeditated or the product of chance. If
premeditated, he tried to find out its reason for being. If
fortuitous, he wished to know the fact, and always attempted to
figure out the possibility of its elimination.

So he learned why and when the sawyers threw a tree up or down
hill; how much small standing timber they tried to fell it through;
what consideration held for the cutting of different lengths of log;
how the timber was skilfully decked on the skids in such a manner
that the pile should not bulge and fall, and so that the scaler
could easily determine the opposite ends of the same log;--in short,
a thousand and one little details which ordinarily a man learns only
as the exigencies arise to call in experience. Here, too, he first
realized he was in the firing line.

Thorpe had assigned him as bunk mate the young fellow who assisted
Tom Broadhead in the felling. Henry Paul was a fresh-complexioned,
clear-eyed, quick-mannered young fellow with an air of steady
responsibility about him. He came from the southern part of the
State, where, during the summer, he worked on a little homestead
farm of his own. After a few days he told Thorpe that he was
married, and after a few days more he showed his bunk mate the
photograph of a sweet-faced young woman who looked trustingly out