Saul sat on the front ledge of the cart to balance it the better.

The coffin, wedged in with the potash barrel, lay pretty still as long as they kept on the soft soil of the forest, but when, about one o'clock, the team emerged upon a corduroy road, made of logs lying side by side across the path, the jolting often jerked the barrel out of place, and then Saul would go to the back of the cart and jerk it and the coffin into position again.
The forest was behind them now.

This log road was constructed across a large tract which sometime since had been cleared by a forest fire, but was now covered again by thick brush standing eight or ten feet high.
One could see little on either side the road except the brown and grey twigs of the saplings that grew by the million, packed close together.
The way had been cut among them, yet they were forcing their sharp shoots up again between the seams of the corduroy, and where, here and there, a log had rotted they came up thickly.

The ground was low, and would have been wet about the bushes had it not been frozen.

Above, the sky was white.