oth paths
and nicely shaven turf before her door.

When the others got in their crops, he looked sorry that he had so
little to show; but as autumn went on, he bethought himself of a
woodland harvest which no one would dispute with him, and which was
peculiarly his own. Every Saturday he was away alone to the forests,
fields, and hills, and always came back loaded with spoils; for he
seemed to know the meadows where the best flag-root grew, the thicket
where the sassafras was spiciest, the haunts where the squirrels went
for nuts, the white oak whose bark was most valuable, and the little
gold-thread vine that Nursey liked to cure the canker with. All sorts of
splendid red and yellow leaves did Dan bring home for Mrs. Jo to dress
her parlor with, graceful-seeded grasses, clematis tassels, downy, soft,
yellow wax-work berries, and mosses, red-brimmed, white, or emerald
green.

"I need not sigh for the woods now, because Dan brings the woods to me,"
Mrs. Jo used to say, as she glorified the walls with yellow maple boughs
and scarlet woodbine wreaths, or filled her vases with russet ferns,
hemlock sprays full of delicate cones, and hardy autumn flowers; for
Dan's crop suited her well.

The great garret was full of the children's little stores and for a time
was one of the sights of the house. Daisy's flower seeds in neat little
paper bags, all labelled, lay in a drawer of a three-legged table.
Nan's herbs hung in bunches against the wall, filling the air with their
aromatic breath. Tommy had a basket of thistle-down with the tiny seeds
attached, for he meant to plant them next year, if they did not all fly
away before that time. Emil had bunches of pop-corn hanging there to
dry, and Demi laid up acorns and different sorts of grain for the pets.
But Dan's crop made the best show, for fully one half of the floor was
covered with the nuts he brought. All kinds were there, for he ranged
the woods for miles round, climbed the tallest trees, and forced his way
into the thickest hedges for his plunder. Walnuts, chestnuts, hazelnuts,
and beechnuts lay in separate compartments, getting brown, and dry, and
sweet, ready for winter revels.

There was one butternut-tree on the place, and Rob and Teddy called it
theirs. It bore well this year, and the great dingy nuts came dropping
down to hide among the dead leaves, where the busy squirrels found them
better than the lazy Bhaers. Their father had told them (the boys, not
the squir