All the dark is veined with red light. A 

 month hence there will be other burnings. 

 All the big knots, the whorls, the forks 

 whatever, indeed, is too tough for axe and 

 wedge heaped together in huge piles, shall 

 lie smouldering for days, with bluebirds 

 chirping over them from nests safe - am- 

 bushed in high, hollow trees ; blue-jays flash- 

 ing, screaming athwart the waking fields. 



Axe-men eye Master Blue-jay askance. 

 He is well known to go o' Fridays and 

 carry sticks to the devil. With that fuel 

 you shall be burned if by any chance you 

 stick blade into the tree whereon he is 

 aperch and he flies away over your head. 

 Indeed, he is a general bringer of ill-luck 

 hooted at, pelted away with stones. The 

 tree that holds his nest is marked for de- 

 struction but no well-informed woodsman 

 will sit by a fire of it. He would nearly as 

 soon tempt fate by burning upon his own 

 hearth wood that the lightning has touched. 

 " Thunder-struck," he calls it. Even upon 

 the log-pile he scents danger of frost, or 

 hail, or wind-torn crops. He drags it care- 

 fully outside the clearing, there to thaw and 

 resolve into its original elements unhelped 

 by fire's red rage. 



Steadily, patiently he toils, singing often 



