As the dead maple trembled more and more violently, and at last swayed to and fro in the breathless air, Amy cried, "Webb! Webb! come away!"
She had hardly spoken when, with a slow and stately motion, the lofty head bowed; there was a rush through the air, an echoing crash upon the rocks. She sprang forward with a slight cry, but Webb, leaning his axe on the prostrate bole, looked smilingly at her, and said, "Why, Amy, there is no more danger in this work than in cutting a stalk of corn, if one knows how."
"There appears to be more," she replied. "I never saw a large tree cut down before, but have certainly read of people being crushed. Does it often happen?"
"No, indeed."
"By the way, Amy," said Leonard, "the wood-chopper that you visited with me is doing so well that we shall give him work on the farm this summer. There was a little wheat in all that chaff of a man, and it's beginning to grow. But the wife is a case. He says he would like to work where he can see you occasionally."
"I have been there twice with Webb since, and shall go oftener when the roads are better," she replied, simply.
"That's right, Amy; follow up a thing," said Mr. Clifford. "It's better to help one family than to try to help a dozen. That was a good clean cut, Webb," he added, examining the stump. "I dislike to see a tree haggled down."
"How strong you are, Webb!" said Amy. "I suppose that if you had lived a few hundred years ago you would have been hacking at people in the same way."
"And so might have been a hero, and won your admiration if you had lived then in some gray castle, with the floor of your bower strewn with rushes. Now there is no career for me but that of a plain farmer."
"What manly task was given long before knighthood, eh, Webb? Right royal was the commission, too. Was it not to subdue the earth? It seems to me that you are striving after the higher mastery, one into which you can put all your mind as well as muscle. Knocking people on the head wasn't a very high art."