The week succeeding the logging bee was an extremely busy one with the Elwoods, who still had a heavy task to perform on their new field, before it could be considered properly cleared or fitted for seeding and harrowing. Sixty days before, that field was covered with a heavy growth of primitive forest, standing in its native majesty, a mountain mass of green vigor and sturdy life, and as seemingly invincible against the assaults of man as it had been against those of the elements whose fury it had so long withstood. But the busy and fatal axe had done its work. That towering forest had been laid prostrate with the earth, and the first process of the Herculean task of converting the forest into the field had been completed. The second and third process, also, in the burning of the slash and the gathering the trunks of the trees into log-heaps, as we have seen, had been in turn successfully accomplished. But the fourth and last process still remained to be performed. Those unseemly log-heaps, cumbering no inconsiderable portion of the field, must be disposed of, to complete the work. This was now the first task of the Elwoods, and time pressed for its speedy execution. Accordingly, the next morning after the bee, they sallied out, each with a blazing brand in his hand, and commenced the work of firing the piles,--a work which, unlike that of firing a combustible and readily catching slash, required not only considerable time, but often the exercise of much skill and patience. But they steadily persevered, and, before sunset, had the gratification of beholding every one of those many scores of huge log-piles, that thickly dotted the ground, clearly within the grasp of the devouring element; and afterwards of seeing that grasp grow stronger and stronger on the solid material on which it had securely fastened, till, to the eye of fancy, the dark old forest seemed by day to be reproduced in the numerous, thickly-set columns of smoke that shot upward and spread out into over-arching canopies above, while, with the gathering darkness of the night, that forest seemed gradually to take the form of a distant burning city in the manifold tapering pillars of fire which everywhere rose from the field, fiercely illuminating the dark and sombre wood-wall of the surrounding forest, and dimly glimmering over the sleeping waters of river and lake beyond.