but the next day a company of lumbermen came and felled the tree that had absorbed the female mates substance , and proceeded to cut it up , deaf to her screams , which her mate , immobile and helpless , could do nothing to stop , thus having to suffer in silence the sounds of her excruciating pain as she was chopped up with axes and sliced with saws , thereafter to be tossed into the flames as firewood , pelted by the rain and lashed by the wind as roof rafters , trod and spat upon and riddled with woodlice as floorboards , eaten up by mould in attics and cellars .