laid round the trunk,
and set on fire where they touch it; of course the tree is burned
through in process of time. These two expedients might be useful in
subsidiary aids; but you perceive your grand reliance must be on the
axe.'

'There is no royal road to felling, any more than to learning. And when
may I hope to get rid of the stumps?'

'I don't think the pine stumps ever decay; but the hardwood, or those of
deciduous trees, may be hitched up by oxen and a crowbar after six or
seven years; or you might burn them down.'

'Hulloa! what's that?'

The exclamation was from Robert, following a much louder exclamation
from Andy in advance. 'He has met with some wild animal,' concluded Mr.
Holt. He was certainly cutting the strangest capers, and flourishing his
hand as if the fingers were burned, howling the while between rage and
terror.

'You disgustin' little varmint! you dirty vagabone, to stick all thim
things in me hand, an' me only goin' to lay a hold on ye gentle-like, to
see what sort of an outlandish baste ye was! Look, Masther Robert, what
he did to me with a slap of his tail!'

Callaghan's fingers radiated handsomely with porcupine's quills, some
inches long, stuck in pretty strongly and deeply; and the animal himself,
quite ready for further offensive warfare, crouched in the fork of a
small maple, just out of reach.

'Ah, then, come down here, you unnatural baste, an' may be I won't strip
off your purty feathers,' exclaimed Andy with unction.

'Cut down the tree,' suggested Arthur. But the porcupine, being more _au
fait_ with the ways of the woods than these new-comers, got away among
the branches into a thicket too dense for pursuit.

'They're as sharp as soords,' soliloquized the sufferer, as he picked
out the quills from his hand and wrist in rather gingerly fashion, and
stanched the blood that followed. 'Masther Robert, avourneen, is he a
four-footed baste or a fowl? for he has some of the signs of both on
him. Wisha, good luck to the poor ould counthry, where all our animals
is dacent and respectable, since St. Patrick gev the huntin' to all the
varmint.'

'A thrashing from a porcupine's tail would be no joke,' observed Arthur.

'I've known dogs killed by it,' said Mr. Holt. 'The quills work into
all parts of their bodies, and the barbed points make extraction very
difficult.'

'I believe the Indians use these in some sort of embroidery.' Robert
held in his hand a bunch of the quills such