young lads of the
village found the old man less grim and stern in the spring woods, with
the sunshine about them, than they had learned to think him as they
watched him sitting in the meeting-house on Sundays.

Sugaring-time is a time of hard and unpleasant work, and this was a more
favourable year than usual. Davie had been too busy with other things
all the winter to be able to do much in the way of improving the tools
and utensils necessary in the making of sugar. By another year there
would be a change, he told Katie in confidence. But in the meantime,
the three great iron kettles that had been in use during his father's
lifetime made the only boiling apparatus; they hung over a fire of great
logs, on a strong pole the ends of which rested on the "crotch" of two
great logs or ports set up fifteen or twenty feet apart, and there was
no roof above them.

The "camp" or "shanty" used for shelter if it rained, was close by the
fire, made of boards, one end of which rested in the ground, while the
other end was raised to rest on a pole extended between the boughs of
two overhanging trees; but the young people rarely cared to enter it.
It held the syrup tubs and such stores of food as were needed from day
to day, but it was small and low, and "out of doors" suited them better,
even at night when their work detained them.

Into the great maple trees, scattered over an area of many acres, small
scooped spouts of cedar were fastened, and out of a tiny cutting, made
by a common axe above it, the sap flowed over these into a primitive
bucket of cedar, or a still more primitive trough placed beneath. This
sap was carried from all parts of the place in pails sustained by a
rough wooden yoke placed on the shoulders of the carrier, and emptied
into great wooden sap-holders beside the kettles. This part of the
work, to be done well, and with the smallest amount of labour, had to be
done in the early morning, before the sun had melted the crust which the
night's frost had made on the snow. For even when the open fields were
bare, the snow still lingered in the hollows of the wood, and to carry
full pails safely, when one's feet were sinking into the mass made soft
by the sunshine, was a feat not to be accomplished easily.

This carrying of the sap and the cutting of the wood for fires, was the
hard part of the work; the boiling of the sap and all the rest of it was
considered by Davie and his brothers as only fun. When th