Snows fall level in the sheltered, still forest. Road-making is practicable. The region is already channelled with watery ways. An imperial pine, with its myriads of feet of future lumber, is worth another path cut through the bush to the frozen riverside. Down goes his Majesty Pinus I., three half-centuries old, having reigned fifty years high above all his race. A little fellow with a little weapon has dethroned the quiet old king. Pinus I was very strong at bottom, but the little revolutionist was stronger at top. Brains without much trouble had their will of stolid matter. The tree fallen, its branches are lopped, its purple trunk is shortened into lengths. The teamster arrives with oxen in full steam, and rimy with frozen breath about their indignant nostrils. As he comes and goes, he talks to his team for company; his conversation is monotonous as the talk of lovers, but it has a cheerful ring through the solitude. The logs are chained and dragged creaking along over the snow to the river-side. There the subdivisions of Pinus the Great become a basis for a mighty snow-mound. But the mild March winds blow from seaward. Spring bourgeons. One day the ice has gone. The river flows visible; and now that its days of higher beauty and grace have come, it climbs high up its banks to show that it is ready for new usefulness. It would be dreary for the great logs to see new verdure springing all around them, while they lay idly rotting or sprouting with uncouth funguses, not unsuspect of poison. But they will not be wasted. Lumbermen, foes to idleness and inutility, swarm again about their winter's trophies. They imprint certain cabalistic tokens of ownership on the logs,--crosses, xs, stars, crescents, alphabetical letters,--marks respected all along the rivers and lakes down to the boom where the sticks are garnered for market. The marked logs are tumbled into the brimming stream, and so ends their forest-life.