by the fire, Mary poured some syrup into a kettle, and just as it
"sugared off" she dipped streams of the amber sweetness into cups of
water. All of them ate it like big children, and oh, but it was good!
Two days more of the same work ended sugar making, but for the next
three days Dannie gathered the rapidly diminishing sap for the vinegar
barrel.

Then there were more hens ready to set, water must be poured hourly
into the ash hopper to start the flow of lye for soap making, and the
smoke house must be gotten ready to cure the hams and pickled meats, so
that they would keep during warm weather. The bluebells were pushing
through the sod in a race with the Easter and star flowers. One morning
Mary aroused Jimmy with a pull at his arm.

"Jimmy, Jimmy," she cried. "Wake up!"

"Do you mane, wake up, or get up?" asked Jimmy sleepily.

"Both," cried Mary. "The larks are here!"

A little later Jimmy shouted from the back door to the barn: "Dannie,
do you hear the larks?"

"Ye bet I do," answered Dannie. "Heard ane goin' over in the nicht. How
long is it now till the Kingfisher comes?"

"Just a little while," said Jimmy. "If only these March storms would
let up 'stid of down! He can't come until he can fish, you know. He's
got to have crabs and minnies to live on."

A few days later the green hylas began to pipe in the swamps, the
bullfrogs drummed among the pools in the bottom, the doves cooed in the
thickets, and the breath of spring was in the nostrils of all creation,
for the wind was heavy with the pungent odor of catkin pollen. The
spring flowers were two inches high. The peonies and rhubarb were
pushing bright yellow and red cones through the earth. The old gander,
leading his flock along the Wabash, had hailed passing flocks bound
northward until he was hoarse; and the Brahma rooster had threshed the
yellow dorkin until he took refuge under the pig pen, and dare not
stick out his unprotected head.

The doors had stood open at supper time, and Dannie staid up late,
mending and oiling the harness. Jimmy sat by cleaning his gun, for to
his mortification he had that day missed killing a crow which stole
from the ash hopper the egg with which Mary tested the strength of the
lye. In a basket behind the kitchen stove fifteen newly hatched yellow
chickens, with brown stripes on their backs, were peeping and nestling;
and on wing the killdeers cried half the night. At two o'clock in the
morning came a tap on the