In the Midwinter Forest 25 



which was bare is covered. For awhile there is 

 a scar where the inner edges of the ring grew 

 together, but in the course of years, if the tree is 

 young and healthy, even this will vanish and no 

 exterior sign of the lost branch will remain. But 

 the lumbermen will find signs of it when the tree 

 is felled and chopped to pieces. The new wood 

 covering the scar did not grow fast to the surface, 

 as new skin does to the raw surface of an animal 

 wound. It is only a cover or cap. When wood- 

 cutters get to work at the tree this cover may come 

 off, like the lid of a box, and the dead stub may 

 drop out like a loose cork. Knotholes in boards 

 are places where such stubs of dead branches have 

 fallen out of the lumber. 



If a living bough is cut from a tree, or if a 

 piece of the living trunk is chopped away, part of 

 the surface dies before the new wood and bark 

 can grow over the wound and cover it. New 

 wood can never attach itself firmly to the dead 

 wood, and so sometimes, when timber is being 

 chopped up, old blazes come to light. When the 

 trunk of a Canadian beech tree was being cut into 

 sections, a billet fell apart revealing a blaze which 

 had been completely covered by the growth of 

 seventy years. There were the letters, " J. C," 

 and below them the letter " F " and a crowned 

 heart — the symbol of the Franciscans. 



About the time when these letters were carved 

 into the young trunk, the Franciscan missionary. 



