“Oh, yes, you will!” [said Toto cheerfully. “I’ll help you get down out of the tree.”]
“Can you climb up here?” asked Blackie.
“No, I can’t climb trees, but I can gnaw them down,” answered the beaver boy. “You just wait. This is a poplar tree, and the bark is very good to eat. You just wait up there. I’ll gnaw through the tree, it will fall, and you can then easily get to the ground.”
“But when the tree falls won’t I get hurt?” asked Blackie.
“No, for I’ll cut the tree so it will fall in among the bushes,” answered Toto, who, by this time, could make a tree fall in any direction he liked. “The bushes will be a sort of cushion, like the cushion of soft grass and chips in our stick house.”
Toto took his position at the foot of the tree, half way up in which was Blackie, the cat. Propping himself up on his tail, and clasping his forepaws around the trunk of the tree, which was about as large around as a rolling pin, Toto began to gnaw.
In a few minutes Toto had almost cut through the trunk.
“Oh, the tree is beginning to fall!” mewed Blackie.
“That’s what I want it to do,” answered Toto. “Don’t be afraid. Sit tight! You will not be hurt.”
The tree was swaying slightly, for the trunk had almost been cut through by the hard-working beaver boy. But he had cut it in the proper way, and it was falling toward a clump of thick bushes.