farm was allowed to run down and go to ruin. His wife had died years
before; they had no children; and the only relatives were a brother and
a nephew in Portland, and a niece in Bangor. Cranston had left no will.
The three heirs could not agree about dividing the property. The case
had gone to court and stayed there for four years.

Meanwhile the farm was rented first to one and then to another tenant,
who cropped the fields, let weeds, briers, and bushes grow, neglected
the buildings and opened unsightly gaps in the hitherto tidy stone
walls. The taxes went unpaid; none of the heirs would pay a cent toward
them; and the fifth year after the old farmer's death the place was
advertised for sale at auction for delinquent taxes.

In March of the fifth year after grandsir Cranston died, Willis and Ben
Murch wrote to one of the Cranston heirs, and got permission to tap the
maples in the wood-lot at the foot of the ledge and to make sugar there.

They tapped two hundred trees, three spiles to the tree, and had a great
run of sap. Addison and I went over one afternoon to see them "boil
down." They had built an "arch" of stones for their kettles up near the
foot of the great ledge, and had a cosy little shed there. Sap was
running well that day; and toward sunset, since they had no team, we
helped them to gather the day's run in pails by hand. It was no easy
task, for there were two feet or more of soft snow on the ground, and
there were as many as three hundred brimming bucketfuls that had to be
carried to the sap holders at the shed.

Several times I thought that Addison was shirking. I noticed that at
nearly every tree he stopped, put down his sap pails, picked up a
handful of the auger chips that lay in the snow at the foot of the tree,
and stood there turning them over with his fingers. The boys had used an
inch and a half auger, for in those days people thought that the bigger
the auger hole and the deeper they bored, the more sap would flow.

"Don't hurry, Ad," I said, smiling, as we passed each other. "The snow's
soft! Pails of sap are heavy!"

He grinned, but said nothing. Afterward I saw him slyly slipping
handfuls of those chips into his pocket. What he wanted them for I could
not imagine; and later, after sunset, as we were going home, I asked him
why he had carried away a pocketful of auger chips.

He looked at me shrewdly, but would not reply. Then, after a minute, he
asked me whether I thought that Ben or W