One day, while stalking wild turkeys, creeping cautiously from tree to tree, an unwonted sound dissipated their calculations. Coming out on a ridge whence the wood swept down to one of the endless ponds, they heard distant noises as of men and horses drawing a heavy load.

'Lumberers,' explained Ina, pricking his ears. He would have immediately turned in a contrary direction; but the prospect of seeing a new phase of life was a strong temptation to Captain Argent, so they went forward towards a smoke that curled above a knot of pines.

It proceeded from the lumber shanty; a long, windowless log-hut with a door at one end, a perpetual fire in the centre, on a large open hearth of stones; the chimney, a hole in the roof. Along both sides and the farther end was a sort of dais, or low platform of unhewn trees laid close together, and supporting the 'bunks,' or general bed, of spruce boughs and blankets. Pots slung in the smoke and blaze were bubbling merrily, under presidence of a red night-capped French Canadian, who acted as cook, and was as civil, after the manner of his race, as if the new arrivals were expected guests.

'Ah, bon-jour, Messieurs; vous êtes les bienvenus. Oui, monsieur—sans doute ce sont des gens de chantier. Dey vork in forest,' he added, with a wave of his hand—plunging into English. 'Nous sommes tous les gens de chantier—vat you call hommes de lumbare: mais pour moi, je suis chef de cuisine pour le présent:' and a conversation ensued with Argent, in which Arthur made out little more than an occasional word of the Canadian's—with ease when it was so Anglican as 'le foreman.'

'What a good-looking, merry-faced chap he is!' observed Arthur, when the red nightcap had been pulled off in an obeisance of adieu, as they went to seek for the others, and witness their disforesting operations.

'French Canadians are generally the personifications of good humour and liveliness,' returned Argent; 'the pleasantest possible servants and the best voyagers. Listen to him now, carolling a "chanson" as he manages his smutty cookery. That's the way they sing at everything.'

'So the lumberers have a foreman?'

'Curious how the French can't invent words expressive of such things, but must adopt ours. He tells me "le foreman's" duty is to distribute the work properly, allotting to each gang its portion; and also to make a report of conduct to the overseer at the end of the season, for which purpose he keeps a journal of events. I had no idea there was so much organization among them; and it seems the gangs have regular duties—one to fell, one to hew, one to draw to the water's edge with oxen; and each gang has a headman directing its labours.'

Nearing the sound of the axes, they came to where a group of lumber-men were cutting down some tall spruce-firs, having first laid across over the snow a series of logs, called 'bedding timbers,' in the line that each tree would fall. One giant pine slowly swayed downwards, and finally crashed its full length on the prepared sleepers, just as the strangers approached. Immediately on its fall, the 'liner' commenced to chop away the bark for a few inches wide all along the trunk, before marking with charcoal where the axes were to hew, in squaring the timber; meantime another man was lopping the top off the tree, and a third cutting a sort of rough mortise-hole at the base, which he afterwards repeated at the upper end.

So busy were the whole party, that the hewer, a genuine Paddy, who stood leaning on his broad axe until the timber was ready for him, was the first to raise his eyes and notice the new-comers. Arthur asked him what the holes were for.