Raymond got into the cart, and took his seat upon a board which passed across from side to side, and they rode along.
They reached, at length, a place where there was a small cart path leading off from the main road into the woods. Raymond turned off into this path; but it was so narrow that both he and Caleb had sometimes to lean away to one side or the other to avoid the bushes. At length he stopped and unfastened the oxen from the tongue. When all was right he started the oxen on before him, Caleb trotting on behind with his saw in his hand.
Presently they struck off from the cart path directly into the woods, and in a few minutes came to the place where the fence was to be made.
CHAPTER IX.
THE FIRE.
Raymond let the cattle browse about, while he went to work, cutting down some small, but yet pretty tall and bushy trees. He then brought up the team, and hooked a long chain into the ring which hung down from the middle of the yoke, upon the under side. The end of the chain trailed upon the ground, as the oxen came along, and Caleb was very much interested to see how they would trample along, any where, among the rocks, roots, mire, logs, bushes, stumps, and, in fact, over and through almost any thing, chewing their cud all the time, patient and unconcerned. When they were brought up near to one of the trees that had been cut down, Raymond would hook the chain around the butt end of it, and then, at his command, they would drag it out of its place in the line of the fence. After looking on for some time, Caleb began to think that he would go to work; and he went to a little tree, with a stem about as big round as his arm, and began to saw away upon it. He found that the saw would run very well indeed; and in a short time, he got the tree off, and then undertook to drag it to the fence.
Raymond was always a very silent man; he seldom spoke, unless to answer a question; and while Caleb had been watching him, when he first began to work, instead of talking with Caleb, as Caleb would have desired, he was all the time singing,