iage,
amidst which clouds of white alder unfolded always in the soft wind
with new surfaces of sweetness.

However, all the fragrant evidence of the new leaves and blossoms was
lost and overpowered here. One perceived only that pungent aroma of
death which the chestnut-trees gave out from their fresh wounds and
their spilled sap of life. One also could scarcely hear the spring
birds for the broad whir of the saw-mill, which seemed to cut the air
as well as the logs. Even the gurgling rush of the brook was lost in
it, but not the roar of water over the dam.

The Squire came out of the mill, whither he had been to say a good
word to Jerome, and stood by Martin Cheeseman. "Lord," he said,
"think of the work those trees had to grow, and the fight they made
for their lives, and then along comes a man with an axe, and breaks
in a minute what he can never make nor mend! What d'ye mean by it,
eh?"

Martin Cheeseman looked at him with shrewd, twinkling eyes. He was
waist-deep in the leafy twigs and boughs as in a nest. "Well," he
said, "we're goin' to turn 'em into somethin' of more account than
trees, an' that's railroad-sleepers; an' that's somethin' the way
Natur' herself manages, I reckon. Look at the caterpillar an' the
butterfly. Mebbe a railroad-sleeper is a butterfly of a tree, lookin'
at it one way."

"That's all very well, but how do you suppose the tree feels?" said
the Squire, hotly.

"Not bein' a tree, an' never havin' been a tree, so's to remember it,
I ain't able to say," returned the old man, in a dry voice; "but,
mebbe, lookin' at it on general principles, it ain't no more painful
for a tree to be cut down into a railroad-sleeper than it is for a
man to be cut down into an angel."

John Jennings laughed.

"You'd make a good lawyer on the defence," said the Squire,
good-naturedly, "but, by the Lord Harry, if all the trees of the
earth were mine, men might live in tents and travel in caravans till
doomsday for all I'd cut one down!"

The Colonel and Jennings did not go into the mill, but they nodded
and sang out good-naturedly to Jerome as they passed. He could not
leave--he had an extra man to feed the saw that day, and had been
rushing matters since daybreak--but he looked out at them with a
radiant face from his noisy interior, full of the crude light of
fresh lumber and sawdust.

The Squire's friendly notice had pleased his very soul.

"That's a smart boy," panted the Colonel, when they had pass