, and waving their caps at their
wives and babies standing in the window along on the way. I didn't sing.
I thought the wind blew too hard,--seems to me that was the reason,--I'm
sure there must have been a reason, for I had a voice of my own in those
days, and had led the choir perpetual for five years.

We weren't going in very deep; Dove and Beadle's lots lay about thirty
miles from the nearest house; and a straggling, lonely sort of place
that was too, five miles out of the village, with nobody but a dog and a
deaf old woman in it. Sometimes, as I was telling you, we had been in a
hundred miles from any human creature but ourselves.

It took us two days to get there though, with the oxen; and the teams
were loaded down well, with so many axes and the pork-barrels;--I don't
know anything like pork for hefting down more than you expect it to,
reasonable. It was one of your ugly gray days, growing dark at four
o'clock, with snow in the air, when we hauled up in the lonely place.
The trees were blazed pretty thick, I remember, especially the pines;
Dove and Beadle always had that done up prompt in October. It's pretty
work going in blazing while the sun is warm, and the woods like a great
bonfire with the maples. I used to like it, but your mother wouldn't
hear of it when she could help herself, it kept me away so long.

It's queer, Johnny, how we do remember things that ain't of no account;
but I remember, as plainly as if it were yesterday morning, just how
everything looked that night, when the teams came up, one by one, and we
went to work spry to get to rights before the sun went down.

There were three shanties,--they don't often have more than two or three
in one place,--they were empty, and the snow had drifted in; Bob
Stokes's oxen were fagged out, with their heads hanging down, and the
horses were whinnying for their supper. Holt had one of his great
brush-fires going,--there was nobody like Holt for making fires,--and
the boys were hurrying round in their red shirts, shouting at the oxen,
and singing a little, some of them low, under their breath, to keep
their spirits up. There was snow as far as you could see,--down the
cart-path, and all around, and away into the woods; and there was snow
in the sky now, setting in for a regular nor'easter. The trees stood up
straight all around without any leaves, and under the bushes it was as
black as pitch.

"Five months," said I to myself,--"five months!"

"What