The Squire came out of the mill, whither he had been to say a good word to Jerome, and stood by Martin Cheeseman. “Lord,” he said, “think of the work those trees had to grow, and the fight they made for their lives, and then along comes a man with an axe, and breaks in a minute what he can never make nor mend! What d'ye mean by it, eh?”
Martin Cheeseman looked at him with shrewd, twinkling eyes. He was waist-deep in the leafy twigs and boughs as in a nest. “Well,” he said, “we're goin' to turn 'em into somethin' of more account than trees, an' that's railroad-sleepers; an' that's somethin' the way Natur' herself manages, I reckon. Look at the caterpillar an' the butterfly. Mebbe a railroad-sleeper is a butterfly of a tree, lookin' at it one way.”
“That's all very well, but how do you suppose the tree feels?” said the Squire, hotly.
“Not bein' a tree, an' never havin' been a tree, so's to remember it, I ain't able to say,” returned the old man, in a dry voice; “but, mebbe, lookin' at it on general principles, it ain't no more painful for a tree to be cut down into a railroad-sleeper than it is for a man to be cut down into an angel.”
John Jennings laughed.
“You'd make a good lawyer on the defence,” said the Squire, good-naturedly, “but, by the Lord Harry, if all the trees of the earth were mine, men might live in tents and travel in caravans till doomsday for all I'd cut one down!”
The Colonel and Jennings did not go into the mill, but they nodded and sang out good-naturedly to Jerome as they passed. He could not leave—he had an extra man to feed the saw that day, and had been rushing matters since daybreak—but he looked out at them with a radiant face from his noisy interior, full of the crude light of fresh lumber and sawdust.
The Squire's friendly notice had pleased his very soul.
“That's a smart boy,” panted the Colonel, when they had passed.
“Yes, sir; he's the smartest boy in this town,” assented the Squire, with a nod of enthusiasm.