Therefore, Wade, perspiring in the forefront of the toilers, saw the first tree topple, heard it crash outward from the site of the camp, and tugged with the others when it was set into place as the sill. When he stood back and wiped his forehead and gazed on that one lonesome log it made roofless out-doors seem bigger and more threatening. The rain was pattering from a cold sky. The thrall of centuries of housed ancestors was on him. Roof and walls had attached themselves to his sentiency, even as the shell of the snail is attached to its pulp. But the next moment Larry Gorman started a song, and the rollicking hundred men about him took it up and toiled with merry thoughtlessness of all except that God's good greenwood was about them and God's sky above them, and Wade bent again to labor, ashamed that he had counted shingles and plaster as standing for so much. They put up eight-log walls for the main camp, notching the ends. A hundred willing men made the buildings grow like toadstools. While the walls were going up men laid floors of poles shaved flat on one side. Others brought moss and chinked the spaces between the logs of the walls. The first team up brought tarred paper and the few boards needed for tables and like uses. The tarred paper and cedar splints roofed all comfortably. The second team brought stove, tin dishes, and raw staples--and cook and cookee walked behind. And when old Christopher Straight came at the tail of the procession as fast as he could hurry back from Castonia settlement, the camps stood nearly complete under the frown of Enchanted Mountain, Enchanted Stream gurgling over brown rocks at the door. The distant whick-whack of axes told where the swampers were clearing the way, and the tearing crash of trees punctuated the ceaseless "ur-r rick-raw!" of the cross-cut saws. The only axe scarf on Ide's trees was the nick necessary to direct their fall. They were felled by the saw. Two days of exploration on the spruce benches straight back from the stream showed up several million feet of black growth easily available for a first season's operation. Ide, Wade, and old Christopher cruised, pacing parallels and counting trees. And when they sat down on an outcropping of ledge the young man made so many sagacious observations that Ide's eyes opened in amazement. "Where did you learn lumberin'?" he demanded. "I wasn't aware that I knew it--not as it is viewed from a practical stand-point," replied Wade, humbly. "I was going to ask you in a moment if you wouldn't like to have me keep still so that you and Christopher could talk sense." "I never heard better opinions on a stand of timber and a lay of land," affirmed his partner. "It looks as though you'd been holdin' out on me," he added, with a grim smile. The young man smiled back. There was a certain grateful pride in his expression.