actions made me feel somewhat anxious and uneasy. I had 

 learned to dread these people, for their presence always seemed 

 the forerunner of some trouble to the wild things of the woods 

 and streams. But soon the man went away and nothing hap- 

 pened this time; but he came back again two or three times 

 that summer, and each time stopped and looked awhile, as he 

 had done at the first. The winter came, the bees quit work- 

 ing, and bunched up in the vacant space in the hollow limb, 

 in a kind of half-dormant condition. It was a very cold win- 

 ter; the ground was frozen hard, and the wind sighed mourn- 

 fully through the naked boughs of the trees. And one cloudy, 

 bleak day again came that white man who during the summer 

 had stood beneath me and watched the bees at work, and with 

 him this time was another man. They came in a wagon drawn 

 by a pair of horses, stopped near me, and tied their horses to 

 a small bUsh. Next, they built a little fire, then took a long 

 two-handled saw and a couple of axes from their wagon, walked 

 up to and around me, looking at me intently as they did so, 

 and talking to each other. A cold, horrible fear went through 

 me as I noticed their conduct, and somehow I had a terrible 

 apprehension that some evil was going to befall me. And it 

 was not long before these forebodings began to be realized. 

 They began chopping with their axes on my trunk, at a point 

 a few feet above the ground. They cut through my bark 

 and a few inches into my sap-wood, making a ring all around 

 my trunk, and then b|egan work with their frightful saw in 

 this circle made with their axes. I saw^ that my hour had 

 come, and that I was doomed to destruction, but what the 

 cause or reason for it was I did not yet know. My wood, 

 was hard, dense, and tough, and the men made slow progress. 

 Several times they stopped and went to their fire to warm 

 their hands, for the day was bitterly cold. I had a faint hope 

 that they might get discouraged and quit — but they kept on, 

 and every screech of that saw, as its cruel teeth tore through 

 me, sounded like a death-knell. And I stood so straight and 

 was so evenly balanced that the men had to Sever my trunk 

 almost entirely from the stump before the end came. But 

 at last I began to tremble and sway, and finally, with a crash 

 * 23 



