Angus continued to walk to and from the post-office, and when alone never failed to hear the mysterious axe at work in the wood. He never heard it unless alone, and it was never heard by any one else. Although the conviction that his death would happen before many months took firm hold of his mind, yet in time he became so accustomed to the thought and its cause as to go about his usual occupations with much of the wonted interest, and even to hear the sound of an axe, wielded by invisible hands, without experiencing agitation.
Weeks sped on and brought winter, and an unusual fall of snow. The stage-road became blocked, and vehicles left the highway to make a new track through the fields. For several months that winter the real road through the hollow was not used, and the snow, which drifted high in it, covered the dikes on each side. Temporary roads and footpaths made winding lines over the white plains on every hand. Angus now followed one of these roads, which ran parallel to the real highway, just the dike being between them, until he reached the grove, when he, with extraordinary and fatal hardihood, instead of remaining in it, used to leave it, and striking out at right angles to it, would walk through the grove, aiming directly for his own house, and greatly shortening his walk thereby. The trees had of course protected the place from wind; there had been no drifting, and walking was easy. He told it at home, and said with grim humor that the Man in the Bush seemed pleased that he would come that way, for his chopping was louder and gladder than ever before; and his wife repeated her counsel earnestly that he look only straight before him, and never stop, nor answer any sound, nor take heed in any way of that unholy work. “And,” said the Angus who years after related it to me, “the Axe might well be merry when she bade him that way!” But Angus laid the advice to heart, and strode steadily through the grove, looking straight before him, and every day the Axe grew gayer and louder. He did not speak of it now. He was getting used to it, and the neighbors had ceased to think of it, the more easily because, as I have told, his literary tastes had separated this Angus from among them. So one day the owner of the grove and his sons went over to chop down one particular tree that, on the day when they had searched the grove in the autumn, had appeared to them to merit destruction. Perhaps it was a beech growing among maples, where it was not wanted, or perhaps it was a dead maple cumbering the ground. They began to chop. It was late in the afternoon. One said with a laugh, “It may be we are taking the tree that poor Angus’ ghost has been working at so long.”