himself, he can examine his head and face;
but the mind, turned in upon itself, with no mirror, weight, count or
measure, feels the hopelessness of the effort.

If some one would only tell him of his capacity and power, of his
mental weakness and deficiency, it would not, perhaps, change his
course, but might teach him how best to pursue it.

CHAPTER XVIII.

SUGAR MAKING.

The long, cold winter was past; spring had come, and with it sugar
making, the carnival season, in the open air, among the trees.

The boys had the preparations for sugar making in an advanced stage. A
new camp had been selected on a dry slope, wood had been cut, the tubs
distributed, and they were waiting for Bart and a good day. Both came
together; and on the day following the close of his school, at an
early hour they hurried off to tap the trees.

Spring and gladness were in the air. The trill of the blue-bird was
a thrill; and the first song of the robin was full of lilac and apple
blossoms. The softened winds fell to zephyrs, and whispered strange
mysterious legends to the brown silent trees, and murmured lovingly
over the warming beds of the slumbering flowers. Young juices were
starting up under rough bark, and young blood and spirits throbbed in
the veins of the boys, and loud and repeated bursts of joyous voices
gushed with the fulness of the renewing power of the season.

The day, with its eager hope, strength and joyousness, filled Bart
to the eyes, and his spirit in exultation breaking from the unnatural
thrall that had for many months of darkness and anxious labor
overshadowed it, went with a bound of old buoyancy, and he started
with laughing, open brow, and springy step, over the spongy ground, to
the poetry of life in the woods.

That one day they tapped all the trees. The next, the kettles were
hung on the large crane, the immense logs were rolled up, the kettles
filled with sap, and the blue smoke of the first fire went curling up
gracefully through the tree-tops. What an event, the first fire! Not
as in New England, sugar in the West is never made until the winter
snow has disappeared, and the surface has become dry, and the woods
pleasant, and the opening day at the boiling was as brilliant as its
predecessor.

Bart and Edward, with a yoke of steers, gathered the sap towards
evening, and George tended the kettles; many curious bright-eyed
chickadees boldly ventured up about the works, peeping, flitting,
and exa