Red-Headed Windego

Big Baptiste Seguin, on snow-shoes nearly six feet long, strode
mightily out of the forest, and gazed across the treeless valley
ahead.

"Hooraw! No choppin' for two mile!" he shouted.

"Hooraw! Bully! Hi-yi!" yelled the axemen, Pierre, "Jawnny" and
"Frawce," two hundred yards behind. Their cries were taken up by the
two chain-bearers still farther back.

"It is a lake, Baptiste?" cried Tom Dunscombe, the young surveyor, as
he hurried forward through balsams that edged the woods and concealed
the open space from those among the trees.

"No, seh; only a beaver meddy."

"Clean?"

"Clean! Yesseh! Clean's your face. Hain't no tree for two mile if de
line is go right."

"Good! We shall make seven miles to-day," said Tom as he came forward
with immense strides, carrying a compass and Jacob's-staff. Behind him
the axemen slashed along, striking white slivers from the pink and
scaly columns of red pines that shot up a hundred and twenty feet
without a branch. If any underbrush grew there, it was beneath the
eight-feet-deep February snow, so that one could see far away down a
multitude of vaulted, converging aisles.