We kept him at the camp until the afternoon, however, and then started
him home, wrapped in a horse-blanket instead of his army overcoat. He
was none the worse for his misadventure, although he declared we tore
off two inches of his skin!
On Sunday the weather began to moderate, and the last four days of our
ice-cutting were much more comfortable. It had been a severe ordeal,
however; the eighty-one dollars that we collected for it were but scanty
recompense for the misery we had endured.
CHAPTER III
A BEAR'S "PIPE" IN WINTER
After ice-cutting came wood-cutting. It was now the latter part of
January with weather still unusually cold. There were about three feet
of snow on the ground, crusted over from a thaw which had occurred
during the first of the month. In those days we burned from forty to
fifty cords of wood in a year.
There was a wood-lot of a hundred acres along the brook on the east side
of the farm, and other forest lots to the north of it. Only the best
old-growth maple, birch and beech were cut for fuel--great trees two and
three feet in diameter.
The trunks were cut into eight-foot lengths, rolled on the ox-sleds with
levers, and then hauled home to the yard in front of the wood-house,
where they lay in four huge piles till March, when all hands turned to,
with axes and saws, and worked it up.
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