" "Very well, then," said Martin, "I'll believe a
quarter of it myself, and so the case is made up, as the judge
would say."
"Well," repeated Martin, "you know MARE Shuff?" "Of course I know Mark
Shuff; and who, that has visited these lakes and woods don't know him?
He is a stalwart man, six feet in his stockings, strong, healthy, and
enduring as iron, I have had him as a boatman and guide about Tupper's
Lake, and the regions beyond it, more than once. He works at lumbering
in the winter, and if there is one among the hundreds, I had almost
said thousands, who make war, in the snowy season of the year, upon
the old pines of the Rackett woods, who can swing an axe more
effectually than Mark Shuff, his light is under a bushel--his fame
obscured. Mark works hard for four or five months, and lays around
loose the balance of the year. In the summer, he holds a cost as a
thing of ornament rather than use, and boots or shoes as luxuries, not
to be reckoned as among the necessaries of life. His hat, as a general
thing, is of straw, and minus a little more than half the brim. He
would be out of place, and out of uniform, as well as out of temper
with himself, if he was for any considerable length of time without
the stub of a marvelously black pipe in his mouth, filled with plug
tobacco, shaved and rubbed in his hand into a proper condition for
smoking.
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