"It's a good variation from the everlasting beans," observed Owen. "I must say, since I've lived in and around the cities, I've got rather tired of beans four or five times a week."
"Gilroy tells me we ought not to complain," said Dale. "He says that in old times the loggers got pork and beans and salt fish and precious little else. We are better off than that."
Early on Christmas morning a handful of the lumbermen held a church service, one reading a chapter from the Bible, another reciting the ten commandments, and a third offering a short prayer. These men asked Owen and Dale to sing and play for them, and the pair complied and rendered several hymns from a tattered book one of the men owned. Then all joined in singing one or two other familiar hymns and wound up the meeting by singing "America."
"That's something like," said Dale, after the meeting was over. "It makes a fellow feel less heathenish to have some sort of a service now and then."
"Well, I always go to church when I get a chance," answered Owen. "But a lumberman doesn't get the chance very often, or a mill hand either—unless the mill is close to some settlement."
The new year found the young lumbermen again in the woods, this time a good mile from the bank of the river. Here a shack had been built, and to this place Jeff sent meals for all hands three times a day, for the men could not spend the necessary time going back and forth to the cabin.
The shack was a poor dwelling-place, and both Dale and Owen were glad when, early in February, they were ordered back to the main camp. In the meantime they heard that Mr. Paxton had taken on six new hands, for the cutting was not progressing as rapidly as the owner of the claim had anticipated.
"Well, I never!" cried Dale, on catching sight of several of the new workmen. "There is Baptiste Ducrot!"
"So it is!" declared Owen. "I thought old Winthrop said he wouldn't engage the man."
"Winthrop is away, Owen. He went last week to visit a sick relative in Lilybay."