“Well, now, I’m mighty glad you’re to be with us again, Mr. Bunyan,” said John Shears effusively. “Thank you, John. And I wish to commend you for your faithful service. I hope to reward you fittingly. And I overlook your failure to ship Babe his parsnips last fall. Your one failure, for which I shall not reprove you. But you must prepare him acres of them at once. Understand? Very well. Yay, Babe!” Johnny Inkslinger, the timekeeper, and the Big Swede, the foreman, were beside Paul Bunyan. The three moved towards the maple grove, and the blue ox, who had been straddling the river, stepped on across it, dragging the cookhouse, the bunkhouses, and the other camp buildings behind him. He was thin, and the shape of his great ribs showed through his shaggy blue hide. As he moved through the twilight shadows he looked like a wrinkled bluff when it is seen dimly in a fog. For half an hour the bunkhouses flashed by so swiftly that their lighted windows made an unbroken streak of light. The loggers in them were singing about the jam on Garry’s Rock and the death of young Munro. As Little Meery listened to the roaring choruses he felt that he would willingly give his life for a single day as a real logger. If he could only be there in one of the bunkhouses, a tough and respected member of a logging crew, a lean, supple, vigorous axman, a fine and admired figure! Vain, vain desire! Poor Little Meery. He abandoned the dream with a sigh. Then he was startled by a dry, rasping chuckle from John Shears. Little Meery was astonished, for he had never heard the boss farmer laugh. “Parsnips, hey?” he cackled. “Ol’ Paul wants his ox critter to have his parsnips right now, does he? Dad gum’, ef that ain’t funny! Ho! ho!” The boss farmer leaped over Honey Creek and strode rapidly towards the farmhouse. Every hundred yards he would pause and chuckle convulsively. “Parsnips, hey? Ye dern’ tootin’ I’ll feet him parsnips! It’s Mr. Bunyan’s pers’nal orders, says I. Heh! heh! Dad burn’, ef that ain’t funny!”