His father was a Maine lumber-dealer, and he had spent much time with his father in the logging camps and backwoods towns of the Pine Tree State. His adventures in these regions, told in his droll way, often excited the wonder of his companions.
“Did you ever see a bear in the backwoods?” one of the boys asked him one day.
“I never saw a live one but once.”
“What did you do?”
“Do? I received a polite bow from him, and then I remembered that I was wanted at home, and went home immediately.
“It was this way.”—All of the boys of the class now gathered around Tommy, as was the custom when he seemed about to tell one of his odd stories.
“I attempted one day to rob a pigeon-woodpecker’s nest which I had found in one of the old logging roads that had not been used for several years. The nest was in a big hollow tree. The top of the tree had blown off, leaving a trunk some twelve or fifteen feet high.
