d to, with a basket of cobs in his hand
for his mother, he hurried away to the woodpile. This was in the yard
near the negro cabin and a hundred yards or more from the house. There
he began to cut and split the wood for the fires that night and for
next morning. Three lengths of this: first, for the grate in his
father's and mother's room--the best to be found among the logs of the
woodpile: good dry hickory for its ready blaze and rousing heat; to be
mixed with seasoned oak, lest it burn out too quickly--an expensive
wood; and perhaps also with some white ash from a tree he had felled in
the autumn. Then sundry back-logs and knots of black walnut for the
cabin of the two negro women (there being no sense of the value of this
wood in the land in those days, nearly all of it going to the cabins,
to the kitchens, to cord-wood, or to the fences of the farm; while the
stumps were often grubbed up and burned on the spot). Then fuel of this
same sort for the kitchen stove. Next, two or three big armfuls of very
short sticks for the small grate in his own small room above stairs--a
little more than usual, with the idea that he might wish to sit up late.

There was scarce light enough to go by. He picked his logs from the
general pile by the feel of the bark; and having set his foot on each,
to hold it in place while he chopped, he struck rather by habit than by
sight. Loud and rapid the strokes resounded; for he went at it with a
youthful will, and with hunger gnawing him; and though his arms were
stiff and tired, the axe to him was always a plaything--a plaything
that he loved. At last, from under the henhouse near by he drew out and
split some pieces of kindling, and then stored his axe in that dry
place with fresh concern about soft weather: for more raindrops were
falling and the wind was rising.

Stooping down now, he piled the fagots in the hollow of his arm, till
the wood rose cold and damp against his hot neck, against his ear, and
carried first some to the kitchen; and then some to the side porch of
the house, where he arranged it carefully against the wall, close to
the door, and conveniently for a hand reaching outward from within. As
he was heaping up the last of it, having taken three turns to the
woodpile, the door was opened slowly, and a slight, slender woman
peered around at him.

"What makes you so late?"

Her tone betrayed minute curiosity rather than any large concern.

"I wanted to finish a shock, mot