ortunity to manifest this sympathy. And more than all,
a logging bee was an event that always promised more or less excitement
and social festivity.

Yankee was "boss" for the day. This position would naturally have fallen
to Macdonald Bhain, but at his brother's bee, Macdonald Bhain shrank
from taking the leading place.

The men with the axes went first, chopping up the half-burned logs into
lengths suitable for the burning-piles, clearing away the brushwood,
and cutting through the big roots of the fire-eaten stumps so that
they might more easily be pulled. Then followed the teams with their
logging-chains, hauling the logs to the piles, jerking out and drawing
off the stumps whose huge roots stuck up high into the air, and drawing
great heaps of brush-wood to aid in reducing the heavy logs to ashes.
At each log-pile stood a man with a hand-spike to help the driver to get
the log into position, a work requiring strength and skill, and above
all, a knowledge of the ways of logs which comes only by experience. It
was at this work that Macdonald Bhain shone. With his mighty strength he
could hold steady one end of a log until the team could haul the other
into its place.

The stump-pulling was always attended with more or less interest and
excitement. Stumps, as well as logs, have their ways, and it takes a
long experience to understand the ways of stumps.

In stump-hauling, young Aleck McGregor was an expert. He rarely failed
to detect the weak side of a stump. He knew his team, and what was
of far greater importance, his team knew him. They were partly of
French-Canadian stock, not as large as Farquhar McNaughton's big, fat
blacks, but "as full of spirit as a bottle of whisky," as Aleck himself
would say. Their first tentative pulls at the stump were taken with
caution, until their driver and themselves had taken the full measure of
the strength of the enemy. But when once Aleck had made up his mind that
victory was possible, and had given them the call for the final effort,
then his team put their bodies and souls into the pull, and never drew
back till something came. Their driver was accustomed to boast that
never yet had they failed to honor his call.

Farquhar's handsome blacks, on the other hand, were never handled after
this fashion. They were slow and sure and steady, like their driver.
Their great weight gave them a mighty advantage in a pull, but never,
in all the solemn course of their existence, had th