CHAPTER V.

STANDING FIRE.


The shanty finished, a huge mass of wood cut into convenient lengths and
piled near the door, a smooth road made down to the river-bank, the
store-house filled with barrels of pork and flour and beans and chests of
tea, the stable for the score of horses, put up after much the same
architectural design as the shanty, and then the lumber camp was
complete, and the men were free to address themselves to the business
that had brought them so far.

As Frank looked around him at the magnificent forests into whose heart
they had penetrated, and tried with his eyes to measure the height of the
splendid trees that towered above his head on every side, he found
himself touched with a feeling of sympathy for them--as if it seemed a
shame to humble the pride of those silvan monarchs by bringing them
crashing to the earth. And then this feeling gave way to another; and as
he watched the expert choppers swinging their bright axes in steady
rhythm, and adding wound to wound in the gaping trunk so skilfully that
the defenceless monster fell just where they wished, his heart thrilled
with pride at man's easy victory over nature, and he longed to seize an
axe himself and attack the forest on his own account.

He had plenty of axe work as it was, but of a much more prosaic kind.