Close on its apparition sounded the exultant, high-keyed
shriek of the saw. It ceased abruptly. Then Bob became conscious of a
heavy _rud, thud_ of mill machinery.
All this time he and Fox were walking along a narrow board walk,
elevated two or three feet above the sawdust-strewn street. They passed
the mill and entered the cool shade of the big lumber piles. Along their
base lay half-melted snow. Soggy pools soaked the ground in the exposed
places. Bob breathed deep of the clear air, keenly conscious of the
freshness of it after the murky city. A sweet and delicate odour was
abroad, an odour elusive yet pungent, an aroma of the open. The young
man sniffed it eagerly, this essence of fresh sawdust, of new-cut pine,
of sawlogs dripping from the water, of faint old reminiscence of cured
lumber standing in the piles of the year before, and more fancifully of
the balsam and spruce, the hemlock and pine of the distant forest.
"Great!" he cried aloud, "I never knew anything like it! What a country
to train in!"
"All this lumber here is going to be sold within the next two months,"
said Fox with the first approach to enthusiasm Bob had ever observed in
him.
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