to the travoy road. One stood to right, the other to left, and
alternately their axes bit deep. It was a beautiful sight this,
of experts wielding their tools. The craft of the woodsman means
incidentally such a free swing of the shoulders and hips, such a
directness of stroke as the blade of one sinks accurately in the
gash made by the other, that one never tires of watching the grace
of it. Tom glanced up as a sailor looks aloft.

"She'll do, Hank," he said.

The two then with a dozen half clips of the ax, removed the
inequalities of the bark from the saw's path. The long, flexible
ribbon of steel began to sing, bending so adaptably to the hands
and motions of the men manipulating, that it did not seem possible
so mobile an instrument could cut the rough pine. In a moment the
song changed timbre. Without a word the men straightened their
backs. Tom flirted along the blade a thin stream of kerosene oil
from a bottle in his hip pocket, and the sawyers again bent to
their work, swaying back and forth rhythmically, their muscles
rippling under the texture of their woolens like those of a panther
under its skin. The outer edge of the saw-blade disappeared.

"Better wedge her, Tom," advised Hank.

They paused while, with a heavy sledge, Tom drove a triangle of
steel into the crack made by the sawing. This prevented the weight
of the tree from pinching the saw, which is a ruin at once to the
instrument and the temper of the filer. Then the rhythmical z-z-z!
z-z-z! again took up its song.