_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.
PLYMOUTH
WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, PRINTERS