the old pines of the Rackett woods, who can swing an axe more
effectually than Mark Shuff, 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 cost 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
quarrelsome or contrary, even when a shade over the line of strict
sobriety. He is a great, strong, square-shouldered, big-breasted,
good-natured specimen of the genus homo, a giant in physical strength,
and were I a wolf, I would prefer letting him alone to any man in
these parts. When he gets just the least grain "shiny" (and he never
gets beyond that), and his oar goes a little wrong, or a twig brushes
him ungently, or his seat gets a little hard, he will express his
sense of its improper deportment by incontinently damning its eyes,
and so forth, as if it were a sentient thing, and understood all his
profane denunciations; but with all this, Mark never forgets to be
respectful, and, in his way, courteous to his employers. He has,
moreover, a sharp, clear eye in his head, and can see a deer, or any
other game, as quick, and shoot it as far as the best, and has as good
a knowledge of where they are to be found, as any man in these woods."

"Well," continued Martin, as he lighted his pipe by dipping it into