“This field was cleared last winter,” said the eagle.

The boy thought of the harvesters at home, who rode on their reaping machines on fine summer mornings, and in a short time mowed a large field.  But the forest field was harvested in winter.  The lumbermen went out in the wilderness when the snow was deep, and the cold most severe.  It was tedious work to fell even one tree, and to hew down a forest such as this they must have been out in the open many weeks.

“They have to be hardy men to mow a field of this kind,” he said.

When the eagle had taken two more wing strokes, they sighted a log cabin at the edge of the clearing.  It had no windows and only two loose boards for a door.  The roof had been covered with bark and twigs, but now it was gaping, and the boy could see that inside the cabin there were only a few big stones to serve as a fireplace, and two board benches.  When they were above the cabin the eagle suspected that the boy was wondering who could have lived in such a wretched hut as that.

“The reapers who mowed the forest field lived there,” the eagle said.

The boy remembered how the reapers in his home had returned from their day’s work, cheerful and happy, and how the best his mother had in the larder was always spread for them; while here, after the arduous work of the day, they must rest on hard benches in a cabin that was worse than an outhouse.  And what they had to eat he could not imagine.

“I wonder if there are any harvest festivals for these labourers?” he questioned.

A little farther on they saw below them a wretchedly bad road winding through the forest.  It was narrow and zigzag, hilly and stony, and cut up by brooks in many places.  As they flew over it the eagle knew that the boy was wondering what was carted over a road like that.

“Over this road the harvest was conveyed to the stack,” the eagle said.

The boy recalled what fun they had at home when the harvest wagons drawn by two sturdy horses, carried the grain from the field.  The man who drove sat proudly on top of the load; the horses danced and pricked up their ears, while the village children, who were allowed to climb upon the sheaves, sat there laughing and shrieking, half-pleased, half-frightened.  But here the great logs were drawn up and down steep hills; here the poor horses must be worked to their limit, and the driver must often be in peril.  “I’m afraid there has been very little cheer along this road,” the boy observed.

The eagle flew on with powerful wing strokes, and soon they came to a river bank covered with logs, chips, and bark.  The eagle perceived that the boy wondered why it looked so littered up down there.

“Here the harvest has been stacked,” the eagle told him.

The boy thought of how the grain stacks in his part of the country were piled up close to the farms, as if they were their greatest ornaments, while here the harvest was borne to a desolate river strand, and left there.