If a fine product of vegetable nature could ever be said
to look ridiculous it was the case now, when the oak stood naked-
legged, and as if ashamed, till the axe-man came and cut a ring
round it, and the two Timothys finished the work with the
crosscut-saw.
As soon as it had fallen the barkers attacked it like locusts, and
in a short time not a particle of rind was left on the trunk and
larger limbs. Marty South was an adept at peeling the upper
parts, and there she stood encaged amid the mass of twigs and buds
like a great bird, running her tool into the smallest branches,
beyond the farthest points to which the skill and patience of the
men enabled them to proceed--branches which, in their lifetime,
had swayed high above the bulk of the wood, and caught the latest
and earliest rays of the sun and moon while the lower part of the
forest was still in darkness.
"You seem to have a better instrument than they, Marty," said
Fitzpiers.
"No, sir," she said, holding up the tool--a horse's leg-bone
fitted into a handle and filed to an edge--"'tis only that they've
less patience with the twigs, because their time is worth more
than mine.
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