Lost in the Backwoods by E. C. Kenyon - HTML preview

CHAPTER XVIII.
 THE MEETING IN THE FOREST.

All through the winter the lumberers work in the woods, from sunrise to sunset, making the forest resound with the strokes of their axes as they fell tree after tree in amazing quantities. Often they divide into bands of six or eight men, each company striving to outrival the other in the amount of work it gets through. At night they return to the great wooden shanty, in which they sleep in the bunks arranged on two tiers of wooden shelves all around the place. They eat salt pork and drink strong tea, and at night sit round the huge log fires, smoking and chewing tobacco, and sometimes singing and telling stories.

Men who are strong and used to physical exertion enjoy the work, and return to it again and again, for the wages are good, and the bold, free life out of doors is not without its charms. But Gerald Morton was not strong enough, or yet rough enough, for the labour and the company it entailed. The men perceived this, and did not like to work with him, in spite of his pleasant, cheery ways. They nicknamed him "the gentleman," and at last their foreman was obliged to admit that it would be well for him to go to some other sphere of labour.

"You're not adapted to this life, nor yet strong enough for it," he said to Gerald, "so you had better go."

Gerald was thinking of these words as he spent his last day in the woods at the lumbering. On the morrow he must again set out on the wearying search for work. He was no nearer finding a fortune than on the first day of his life in America, but he thanked God in his heart as he worked that he had found in those huge American forests that which was of more value than any earthly money. Through his head were ringing the words of an old, old Book, which he carried everywhere with him, at first because it was his mother's, and afterwards for its own sake:—

"The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether.

"More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey, or the honeycomb.

"Moreover, by them is Thy servant warned: and in keeping of them there is great reward."

"Father! Father! That must be Uncle Gerald! Look! See! He's just like your and Cynthy's description of him!"

Cyril's glad cry caused the axe to drop from the tired lumberer's hand. He turned and saw a little company of equestrians coming quickly up to him, their horses crunching the hard snow and the broken boughs strewing the ground.

"Gerald! Gerald! My dear Gerald!" cried Mr. Morton, dismounting and holding out an eager hand.

"Cyril! Cyril!"

Gerald clasped the hand as if he would never let it go.

* * * * * * *

"We have both been lost in the backwoods, Uncle Gerald," said Cyril, with a fine sense of comradeship, as they returned home in a great Transatlantic steamer.

"And you have both been found," said his father, with deep thankfulness. "My two beloved ones," he added mentally, looking at them with glad eyes, as he thought that neither would have been restored to his friends if it had not been for his strenuous efforts to do right and serve God when to do so was an extremely difficult task. "Truly there is a reward for the righteous," he said to himself, and he was not thinking merely of the earthly result of their conduct.

THE END.