We had been but a few minutes at work when the boss came driving up behind us; as he turned out in order to pass, he called to me to come with him, and lend a hand at loading. I had an uncomfortable premonition of the ordeal before me; why, I do not know, for the boss had treated me civilly so far; but I greatly wished to stay in the camp, and I much feared discharge. The boss drove on for some distance, then branched off on a side-road, and having passed a number of bark-piles, finally turned around with great difficulty, and drew up, as Black Bob had done, beside a cord of bark. I hastened to place a stone under a hind wheel, and then threw off my coat, and, getting in between the wagon and the pile, I began to pass the bark over my head, as I had learned to do from Toler. The boss stood on the bottom of the rig, accepting listlessly the bark as I passed it, and tossing it carelessly into place. His whole manner was meant to convey to me the idea of my own inefficiency, as though he was ready to work, even anxious to get warmed up in the frosty air, but my part was so slowly done that his own was reduced to child's play. The storm brewed for a time in grim silence, but soon it broke into angry shouts of "Faster, faster, damn you!" and then the entire gamut of insults and excommunications. I had been cursed at West Point, though in terms less hard to bear; and in expectation of the worst, I thought that I had schooled myself to take it philosophically when it came. But I had an awful moment now, for philosophy was clean gone, and in its place was a swift, mad desire to kill; and as the hot blood rushed to my brain, and tingled in my finger-tips, all that I could see for the instant were the handy stones under my feet, and the close range of Fitz-Adams's head. I do not know what it was that saved me, unless it was the sight of Fitz-Adams flushed with the anger into which he lashed himself, and becoming the more ludicrously impotent in his rage, as I restrained my temper, and showed no sign of fear. Why he did not discharge me on the spot I do not know. With awful imprecations he kept urging me to faster and yet faster work. I quickened my clumsy pace to the swiftest that I could maintain with efficiency, and held it there, careless of his curses; and, exhausted as I was, I yet had the satisfaction at the last of noting that our load was on as quickly as was Black Bob's.