casionally the
Supervisor was forced to unsling an ax and chop his way through a fallen
tree, and each time the student hurried to the spot, ready to aid, but
was quite useless. He admired the ease and skill with which the older man
put his shining blade through the largest bole, and wondered if he could
ever learn to do as well.

"One of the first essentials of a ranger's training is to learn to swing
an ax," remarked McFarlane, "and you never want to be without a real
tool. _I_ won't stand for a hatchet ranger."

Berrie called attention to the marks on the trees. "This is the
government sign--a long blaze with two notches above it. You can trust
these trails; they lead somewhere."

"As you ride a trail study how to improve it," added the Supervisor,
sheathing his ax. "They can all be improved."

Wayland was sure of this a few steps farther on, when the Supervisor's
horse went down in a small bog-hole, and Berrie's pony escaped only by
the most desperate plunging. The girl laughed, but Wayland was appalled
and stood transfixed watching McFarlane as he calmly extricated himself
from the saddle of the fallen horse and chirped for him to rise.

"You act as if this were a regular part of the journey," Wayland said to
Berrie.

"It's all in the day's work," she replied; "but I despise a bog worse
than anything else on the trail. I'll show you how to go round this one."
Thereupon she slid from her horse and came tiptoeing back along the edge
of the mud-hole.

McFarlane cut a stake and plunged it vertically in the mud. "That means
'no bottom,'" he explained. "We must cut a new trail."

Wayland was dismounting when Berrie said: "Stay on. Now put your horse
right through where those rocks are. It's hard bottom there."

He felt like a child; but he did as she bid, and so came safely through,
while McFarlane set to work to blaze a new route which should avoid the
slough which was already a bottomless horror to the city man.

This mishap delayed them nearly half an hour, and the air grew dark and
chill as they stood there, and the amateur ranger began to understand how
serious a lone night journey might sometimes be. "What would I do if when
riding in the dark my horse should go down like that and pin me in the
mud?" he asked himself. "Eternal watchfulness is certainly one of the
forester's first principles."

The sky was overshadowed now, and a thin drizzle of rain filled the air.
The novice hastened to throw his rain