he
latch was loose on the south barn-door; then I had to go round and take
a last look at the sheep, and toss down an extra forkful for the cows,
and go into the stall to have a talk with Ben, and unbutton the
coop-door to see if the hens looked warm,--just to tuck 'em up, as you
might say. I always felt sort of homesick--though I wouldn't have owned
up to it, not even to Nancy--saying good-by to the creeturs the night
before I went in. There, now! it beats all, to think, you don't know
what I'm talking about, and you a lumberman's son. "Going in" is going
up into the woods, you know, to cut and haul for the winter,--up,
sometimes, a hundred miles deep,--in in the fall and out in the spring;
whole gangs of us shut up there sometimes for six months, then down with
the freshets on the logs, and all summer to work the farm,--a merry sort
of life when you get used to it, Johnny; but it was a great while ago,
and it seems to me as if it must have been very cold.--Isn't there a
little draft coming in at the pantry door?

So when I'd said good-by to the creeturs,--I remember just as plain how
Ben put his great neck on my shoulder and whinnied like a baby,--that
horse know when the season came round and I was going in, just as well
as I did,--I tinkered up the barn-yard fence, and locked the doors,
and went in to supper.

I gave my finger a knock with the hammer, which may have had something
to do with it, for a man doesn't feel very good-natured when he's been
green enough to do a thing like that, and he doesn't like to say it
aches either. But if there is anything I can't bear it is lamp-smoke; it
always did put me out, and I expect it always will. Nancy knew what a
fuss I made about it, and she was always very careful not to hector me
with it. I ought to have remembered that, but I didn't. She had lighted
the company lamp on purpose, too, because it was my last night. I liked
it better than the tallow candle.

So I came in, stamping off the snow, and they were all in there about
the fire,--the twins, and Mary Ann, and the rest; baby was sick, and
Nancy was walking back and forth with him, with little Nancy pulling at
her gown. You were the baby then, I believe, Johnny; but there always
was a baby, and I don't rightly remember. The room was so black with
smoke, that they all looked as if they were swimming round and round in
it. I guess coming in from the cold, and the pain in my finger and all,
it made me a bit sick. At a