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There were several families of French-Canadians living at clearings on Lurvey's Stream, three miles below the lake; and since I was the youngest and least efficient axman of the party, they sent me down there every afternoon to buy milk and eggs, for more white monkey.
From that place they would have to descend Lurvey's Stream for two or three miles to Lurvey's Mills, and then reach home by way of a wagon road. Dusk falls rapidly in the woods. By the time they reached the camp they could barely see the "blazes" on the tree trunks. They decided to kindle a fire and remain at the camp till the next morning.
Twelve miles of our way that morning was by a trodden winter road, but the last four miles, after crossing Lurvey's Stream, had to be broken through three feet of snow in the woods, giving us four hours of tiresome tramping. We reached the lot at one o'clock, and during the afternoon set up the horse-power on the lake shore, at the foot of the slope where the white birch grew.
Lurvey's land, and thereby comply with the letter of the law, by aid of which she was endeavoring to rob us and escheat our rights to the birch. There were ten of us. Each knew what was at stake, and all worked with such good-will that by five o'clock we had the saw running.
During the next two weeks the birch bolts were drawn to our mill, four miles down Lurvey's Stream, and sawn into thin strips and dowels, then shipped in bundles, by rail and schooner from Portland, to New York; and the contract netted the old Squire about twenty-five hundred dollars above the cost of the birch.
They were still much excited, and told so wild and curious a story of their adventure that after breakfast the old Squire and Addison drove over to Lurvey's Mills to investigate. Almost the first thing they saw when they reached the Mills was that old "daguerreotype saloon," standing beside the road near the post office, and pottering about it a large, ungainly man a hunchback with club feet.
"They haven't gone to Adger's, for that is east from here. I'll tell you! They went to Boundary Camp on Lurvey's Stream. And that's eighteen or nineteen miles from here." He glanced at the sky. "Now, what shall we do? It will snow to-night." "Perhaps we could get up there by dark," said I. For a moment Addison considered. "All right!" he exclaimed. "It's a long jaunt. But come on!"
All that forenoon it poured steadily; and water began to show yellow through the snow in the brook beside our camp. Addison crept out and looked round, but soon came back dripping wet. "Look here!" said he in some excitement. "There's a freshet coming, and Lurvey's Stream is between us and Boundary Camp. If we don't start soon, we can't get there at all."
It was so beautiful that I waked Addison to see it. By morning winter weather had come again; the snow slush was frozen. The stream, however, was still too high to be crossed, and the swamps and meadows were also impassable. We now bethought ourselves of another route home, by way of a lumber trail that led southward to Lurvey's Mills, where there was a bridge over the stream.
Two winters before he had contracted with old Zack Lurvey to cut three hundred thousand feet of hemlock logs and draw them to the bank of a small river where in the spring they could be floated down to Lurvey's Mills. For hauling the logs he had two yokes of oxen, the yoke of large eight-year-olds that I have already described, and another yoke of small, white-faced cattle.
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