"This heart's goin' to be tough, though; got a knot in it,"
and tough it proved, resisting all his blows.
"You're a tough sucker, now, ain't yeh?" said Tim, through his shut
teeth, addressing the block. "We'll try yeh this way." He laid the end
of the block upon a log and plied the axe with the full strength of
his slight body, but the block danced upon the log and resisted all his
blows.
"Say! you're a tough one now!" he said, pausing for breath.
"Let me try that," said Cameron, and, putting forth his strength, he
brought the axe down fairly upon the stick with such force that the
instrument shore clean through the knot and sank into the log below.
"Huh! that's a cracker," said Tim with ungrudging admiration. "All you
want is knack. I'll slab it off and you can do the knots," he added with
a grin.
As the result of this somewhat unequal division of labor, there lay in
half an hour a goodly pile of fire wood ready for the cooking. It caught
Haley's eye as he came in to breakfast.
"I say, Missus, that's a bigger pile than you've had for some time.
Guess my new man ain't so slow after all."
"Huh!" puffed his wife, waddling about with great agility, "it was Tim
that done it."
"Now, Ma, ye know well enough he helped Tim, and right smart too," said
the daughter, but her mother was too busy getting breakfast ready for
the hungry men who were now performing their morning ablutions with the
help of a very small basin set upon a block of wood outside the kitchen
door to answer.
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