“I shall cut two cords a day, right along,” said James.

“I can do it easily.”

“That’s pretty good chopping—better than the average by considerable,” replied his uncle; “and you are larger and stronger than the average of choppers, I guess.”

The bargain was clinched, and James passed on to his sister’s, who gave him a warm greeting, and agreed to board him. So James was once more settled, and ready to proceed to business. The next morning he appeared in the rôle of a wood-chopper; not a new occupation to him.

It was unfortunate for James that his work was in full view of Lake Erie, on whose blue bosom he could see plenty of craft sailing, at any time. The location seemed to conspire with the bad books at Barton’s to fan his desire for a seafaring life into a flame. In the circumstances, it was not strange that James did not forget the books he had read. He often stopped in his work to watch a vessel gliding over the waves like a swan, and sometimes he would seat himself upon a log to count the sails appearing in the distance. It was a rare spectacle to him, and his young heart bounded with delight. He cherished the secret thought that, some day, he would be sailing over that very lake.

There were several choppers near him, one of them a German. He was a clever man, and spoke very broken English. James thought he was a slow chopper, and noticed that his axe did not fly briskly. At the end of a week, however, he found that the German had cut and corded two cords a day—just the amount he himself had cut.

“I don’t understand it,” he said to his sister, on going home. “I strike two blows to the German’s one, and yet he has cut as many cords as I have.”

“Perhaps he strikes heavier blows,” suggested his sister.

“I doubt it,” replied James; “but I will find out the reason.”

James was on the alert to find out the reason of the German’s success. Nor was he left long in the dark. Lake Erie had no attractions for the Teutonic chopper, and so he kept steadily at his work, from morning until night, while James frequently stopped to watch the sails in the distance. The German did not strike blows so rapidly as James, nor were his blows more telling, but he was steadily at work from morning until night. James comprehended the whole, and it was a good lesson to him. He took his first lesson of application and perseverance of the German wood-chopper, and reduced it to practice at once. It rather cooled his fiery ardour for the sea. He confessed to his sister that he wasted some time in watching sails on the lake. At the same time, he owned that he had a longing for the sea.

“You surprise me, James,” his sister said. “I never thought that of you. You can’t be in earnest, can you?”

“I never was more earnest in my life,” answered James, coolly. “The height of my ambition is to command a ship.”

“Captain Garfield! That is the title you want to earn, is it?” remarked his sister. “I hope you’ll never get it.”

“You know that was the title of one of our great ancestors, Captain Benjamin Garfield,” suggested James.

“But he didn’t get his title on a ship, by any means; he got it in the Revolutionary war,” retorted his sister.

“Anything but a sailor.”

“I might be something worse than that,” added James.