196 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



enveloped hills and the trees are lashed by the wind, we 

 still see him jogging past, a humble but a human and a 

 faithful cog in the great machinery of our government, 

 linking up the old, pioneer America with the new. 



Nowadays in Summer he often meets automobiles 

 bearing registration numbers of far states, drawn here 

 by the lure of the mountains. But there are none in 

 Winter. They disappear before the white snow-caps on 

 the range have crept down to timber; and by the time 

 the world is on runners, Tom meets most often the sleds 

 of the lumber men hauling the precious timber to the 

 railroad, or bringing out the cord wood which makes the 

 wise farmer independent of coal. Sometimes a load of 

 hay on runners will go by, on its way to some farm where 

 the supply has run low, and then Tom will have to turn 

 out of the single track, nearly upsetting his pung as it 

 dips in the drift, while the driver on top of the hay 

 shouts a "Thank you!" He meets, too, the school 

 barge, bringing in the children to the "centre school," 

 and he has been known to have to dodge snowballs on 

 such occasions. He meets a neighbour, now and then, 

 wrapped up to the ears like himself, and slipping along 

 over the blue-shadowed road with jingling sleigh-bells. 

 But always it is the simple life of the frontier country 

 that he encounters, with its suggestion of a living wrung 

 from the soil and a mode of existence dependent on the 

 earth and its moods of wind and weather. It is not a 

 sign of intellectual poverty that when Tom and a 



