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CONCERNING SAWDUST PILES, AND THE
THINGS THAT VANISH WHEN THE LUMBER
CAMP APPEARS: BY GRACE E. WARD
)BINSON CRUSOE, at sight of the strange footprint
upon his desert isle, could not have given a more vio-
ent start of surprise and consternation than we did
when, driving to our favorite grove, we found a mush-
room growth of little huts sprung up in the very heart
                F) 1  ý0ll  .11I,]
                "Why, what-what is the matter      we gasped.
"Are they going to cut down our woods?" Some way, we always
spoke as if we personally bore the burden of taxation of all the hill-
country.
   pA rodigiously fat woman whose right arm alone looked as if it
might fell a pine tree, clad in a magenta wrapper that billowed over
all space, squeezed through the door of the nearest hut and surveyed
us. That settled it. We knew the worst. Just what the affinity is
we know not, but the calico wrapper of a certain vivid magenta hue
is the inevitable concomitant of the portable steam-mill.
   "The boys hey jest set up the shanties," she vouchsafed, "and
we
callerlate ter go ter sawin' the fust 'the week."
   We groaned. That's what they all do. Every soul that owns a
stick of timber "callerlates ter go ter sawin'," these days.
  But we would not give up this our last picnic. We spread our
table in the presence of our enemies and looked our last upon those
tall, straialht trunks whose far-off tufted crests bent in the breeze as
if
to say, "We, about to die, salute you."
   Oh, the pity of it! It was suchý a wonderful place. There were
long,
dim aisles, high-vaulted. There were pine-roofed, laurel-banked
paths whose low arch one entered with a sense of mystery and awe,
and from whose premature dusk, in late afternoon, one emerged again
into the sunny, fern-laughing pasture with a sense of having in some
way cheated time and gained several hours of daylight.
   And now it was ,going to be like those other mill-yards. There
Would be the loggers camps with all the details of housekeeping de-
lightfullv open and above board. Blankets, pillows, kitchen utensils,
clothing, are always in full evidence. The dinner is prepared on a
range outside the door. Exclusiveness is unknown to the logger.
   Soon, there would be the portable mill, the Chimaera of the hill
country, the monster that devours and scorches and departs. There
would be the strident scream of the saw as it drives through a mag-