If fortuitous, he wished to know the fact, and always attempted to figure out the possibility of its elimination.
So he learned why and when the sawyers threw a tree up or down hill; how much small standing timber they tried to fell it through; what consideration held for the cutting of different lengths of log; how the timber was skilfully decked on the skids in such a manner that the pile should not bulge and fall, and so that the scaler could easily determine the opposite ends of the same log;--in short, a thousand and one little details which ordinarily a man learns only as the exigencies arise to call in experience.

Here, too, he first realized he was in the firing line.
Thorpe had assigned him as bunk mate the young fellow who assisted Tom Broadhead in the felling.

Henry Paul was a fresh-complexioned, clear-eyed, quick-mannered young fellow with an air of steady responsibility about him.

He came from the southern part of the State, where, during the summer, he worked on a little homestead farm of his own.

After a few days he told Thorpe that he was married, and after a few days more he showed his bunk mate the photograph of a sweet-faced young woman who looked trustingly out of the picture.
"She's waitin' down there for me, and it ain't so very long till spring," said Paul wistfully.