wo feet of it. The surface was promptly
covered by a second storm. Radway doggedly plowed it out again.

This time the goddess seemed to relent. The ground froze solid. The
sprinklers became assiduous in their labor. Two days later the road was
ready for the first sleigh, its surface of thick, glassy ice, beautiful
to behold; the ruts cut deep and true; the grades sanded, or sprinkled
with retarding hay on the descents. At the river the banking ground
proved solid. Radway breathed again, then sighed. Spring was eight days
nearer. He was eight days more behind.

Chapter XI

As soon as loading began, the cook served breakfast at three o'clock.
The men worked by the light of torches, which were often merely catsup
jugs with wicking in the necks. Nothing could be more picturesque than
a teamster conducting one of his great pyramidical loads over the little
inequalities of the road, in the ticklish places standing atop with the
bent knee of the Roman charioteer, spying and forestalling the chances
of the way with a fixed eye and an intense concentration that relaxed
not one inch in the miles of the haul. Thorpe had become a full-fledged
cant-hook man.

He liked the work. There is about it a skill that fascinates. A man
grips suddenly with the hook of his strong instrument, stopping one end
that the other may slide; he thrusts the short, strong stock between the
log and the skid, allowing it to be overrun; he stops the roll with
a sudden sure grasp applied at just the right moment to be effective.
Sometimes he allows himself to be carried up bodily, clinging to the
cant-hook like an acrobat to a bar, until the log has rolled once; when,
his weapon loosened, he drops lightly, easily to the ground. And it is
exciting to pile the logs on the sleigh, first a layer of five, say;
then one of six smaller; of but three; of two; until, at the very apex,
the last is dragged slowly up the skids, poised, and, just as it is
about to plunge down the other side, is gripped and held inexorably by
the little men in blue flannel shirts.

Chains bind the loads. And if ever, during the loading, or afterwards
when the sleigh is in motion, the weight of the logs causes the pyramid
to break down and squash out;--then woe to the driver, or whoever
happens to be near! A saw log does not make a great deal of fuss while
falling, but it falls through anything that happens in its way, and a
man who gets mixed up in a load of twenty-five or thi