hings to the place where the first pole lay on
the ground, and two of them took bars and the other took one of the
shovels.

And the men with the bars stuck them into the ground and loosened the
dirt, and the other man scooped out the dirt with his big
mustard-spoon. Then some more dirt was loosened and that was scooped
out with the shovel.

The hole that they were digging was not much bigger around than the
end of the pole which would go into it.

The hole kept getting deeper, so that a common shovel wouldn't have
got up any dirt at all; but the man with the mustard-spoon shovel just
gave it a little twist, and lifted it out with dirt in it.

Pretty soon they had the hole dug deep enough.

It was so deep that, if a man could have stood on the bottom of it, he
could have just seen out, if he stood on his tiptoes.

But only a slim man could have got into the hole. A fat man would have
stuck fast as soon as his legs were in.

Then the men put down their bars and the shovel, and got the little
poles, and went where the long log lay.

And they rolled it over with bars which were something like tongs,
except that they had only one handle; and they rolled it until the big
end of the log was just over the hole.

Then they took the shortest small poles with spikes in the ends, and
they put them where they could reach them quickly.

And they all took hold of the end of the log and lifted it as high as
they could reach; and one of the men reached out quickly for his spike
pole, while the other two men held the log, and he jabbed the spike
hard into the log and held it while another man got his spike pole and
jabbed the spike hard into the log.

Then the third man jabbed the spike of his pole in, and they all
lifted together, and the butt end of the log slipped a little way into
the hole.

It couldn't go all the way to the bottom, because the big pole wasn't
up far enough yet, and the butt end struck the side of the hole.

Then they got longer spike poles, one man at a time, and they lifted
again, and the big pole slipped a little farther down into the hole.

And one of the men jabbed his spike pole in at another place, and then
the other men did, and they lifted again, and the big pole went
_thump!_ on the bottom of the hole.

And the men left their spike poles sticking in, all around, and jammed
the other ends into the ground to hold the big pole up straight while
they filled in the dirt around it.

David ha