fowl, came and stood on one leg and looked at me first with one eye and
then with the other. She asked innumerable impertinent questions and was
generally disagreeable.

"I am sorry, madam," I said finally, "but I have grown adamant to
criticism. I have done my work as well as it lies in me to do it. It is
the part of sanity to throw it aside without compunction. A work must
prove itself. Shoo!"

I said this with such conclusiveness and vigour that the critical old
hen departed hastily with ruffled feathers.

So I sat there in the glorious perfection of the forenoon, the great day
open around me, a few small clouds abroad in the highest sky, and all
the earth radiant with sunshine. The last snow of winter was gone, the
sap ran in the trees, the cows fed further afield.

When the eye of the axe was sufficiently expanded by the heat I drew it
quickly from the fire and drove home the helve which I had already
whittled down to the exact size. I had a hickory wedge prepared, and it
was the work of ten seconds to drive it into the cleft at the lower end
of the helve until the eye of the axe was completely and perfectly
filled. Upon cooling the steel shrunk upon the wood, clasping it with
such firmness that nothing short of fire could ever dislodge it. Then,
carefully, with knife and sandpaper I polished off the wood around the
steel of the axe until I had made as good a job of it as lay within my
power.

So I carried the axe to my log-pile. I swung it above my head and the
feel of it was good in my hands. The blade struck deep into the oak