through a stick o' wood like--lyin'." He selected a saw, and put it
in order for Lemuel. "There!" He picked out another. "Here's
_my_ old stand-by!" He took up a saw-horse, at random, to
indicate that one need not be critical in that, and led through the
open door into the wood-yard, where a score or two of saws were
already shrilling and wheezing through the wood.

It was a wide and lofty shed, with piles of cord-wood and slabs at
either end, and walled on the farther side with kindling, sawed,
split, and piled up with admirable neatness. The place gave out the
sweet smell of the woods from the bark of the logs and from the
fresh section of their grain. A double rank of saw-horses occupied
the middle space, and beside each horse lay a quarter of a cord of
wood, at which the men were toiling in sullen silence for the most
part, only exchanging a grunt or snarl of dissatisfaction with one
another.

"Morning, mates," said Lemuel's friend cheerfully, as he entered the
shed, and put his horse down beside one of the piles. "Thought we'd
look in and see how you was gettin' along. Just stepped round from
the Parker House while our breakfast was a-cookin'. Hope you all
rested well?"

The men paused, with their saws at different slopes in the wood, and
looked round. The night before, in the nakedness in which Lemuel had
first seen them, the worst of them had the inalienable comeliness of
nature, and their faces, softened by their relation to their bodies,
were not so bad; they were not so bad, looking from their white
nightgowns; but now, clad in their filthy rags, and caricatured out
of all native dignity by their motley and misshapen attire, they