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46 The lumber on Paul till Paul begged for mercy. They'd sliced the first slab off a big butt log, And the sawyer had slammed the carriage back To slam end on again against the saw teeth. To judge them by the way they caught themselves When they saw what had happened to the log, They must have had a guilty expectation Something was going to go with their slambanging. Something had left a broad black streak of grease On the new wood the whole length of the log Except, perhaps, a foot at either end. But when Paul put his finger in the grease, It wasn't grease at all, but a long slot. The log was hollow. They were sawing pine. "First time I ever saw a hollow pine. That comes of having Paul around the place. Take it to hell for me," the sawyer said. Everyone had to have a look at it, And tell Paul what he ought to do about it. (They treated it as his.) "You take a jack-knife, And spread the opening, and you've got a dug-out All dug to go a-fishing in." To Paul The hollow looked too sound and clean and empty Ever to have housed birds or beasts or bees. There was no entrance for them to get in by. It looked to him like some new kind of hollow He thought he'd better take his jack-knife to. So after work that evening he came back And let enough light into it by cutting To see if it was empty. He made out in there A slender length of pith, or was it pith? It might have been the skin a snake had cast And left stood up on end inside the tree