CO ATE FARM. 31 



" He had chosen the black poplar for the 

 canoe because it was the lightest wood, and 

 would float best. To fell so large a tree had 

 been a great labour, for the axes were of poor 

 quality, cut badly, and often required sharpen- 

 ing. He could easily have ordered half a 

 dozen men to throw the tree, and they would 

 have obeyed immediately ; but then the indi- 

 viduality and interest of the work would have 

 been lost. Unless he did it himself its im- 

 portance and value to him would have been 

 diminished. It had now been down some 

 weeks, had been hewn into outward shape, 

 and the larger part of the interior slowly dug 

 away with chisel and gouge. 



" He had commenced while the hawthorn 

 was just putting forth its first spray, when the 

 thickets and the trees were yet bare. Now 

 the May bloom scented the air, the forest was 

 green, and his work approached completion. 

 There remained, indeed, but some final shaping 

 and rounding off, and the construction, or 

 rather cutting out, of a secret locker in the 

 stern. This locker was nothing more than a 

 square aperture chiselled out like a mortise, 



