196 MARK 8HUFF. 







" Very well, then," said Martin, " I'll believe a quarter of 

 it myself, and so the case is made up, as the judge wotM 

 say." 



" Well," repeated Martin, " you know MARK SHTJFF ?" 

 " Of course I know MARK SHTJFF ; and who, that has visited 

 these lakes and woods don't know him ? He is a stalwart 

 man, six feet in his stockings, strong, healthy, and enduring 

 as iron. I have had him as a boatman and guide about 

 Tupper's Lake, and the regions beyond it, more than once. 

 He works at lumbering in the winter, and if there is one 

 among the hundreds, I had almost said thousands, who make 

 war, in the snowy season of the year, upon the old pines of 

 the Rackett woods, who can swing an axe more effectually 

 than MARK SHTTFF, his light is under a bushel his fame 

 obscured. MARK works hard for four or five months, and 

 lays around loose the balance of the year. In the summer, 

 he holds a coat as a thing of ornament rather than use, and 

 boots or shoes as luxuries, not to be reckoned as among the 

 necessaries of life. His hat, as a general thing, is of straw, 

 and minus a little more than half the brim. He would be 

 out of place, and out of uniform, as well as out of temper 

 with himself, if he was for any considerable length of time 

 without the stub of a marvelously black pipe in his mouth, 

 filled with plug tobacco, shaved and rubbed in his hand into 

 a proper condition for smoking. MARK, though by no means 

 an intemperate man, is fond of a drop now and then, and 

 when he has just a thimbleful too much, the way he will 

 swear is emphatically a sin. And yet he is anything but 



