be managed without waste.

We found the kettle that they made the boiled dinner in, an enormous
three-legged witch-pot, also a number of big iron crane hangers, for
swinging vessels above the open fire. And there were three gridirons of
different patterns, for grilling meat over the coals--one of them round
with a revolving top, another square, sloping, with a little trough at
the bottom to catch the juice of a broiling steak. Elizabeth agreed that
we might use those sometimes and I set them over by the stair. We were
not delving deeply, not by any means--just picking off the nuggets, as
it were. It would be weeks before we would know the full extent of our
collection.

Pushed back under the eaves there were what appeared to be several
"cord" bedsteads, not the high-posted kind--that would have been too
much to expect--but the low, home-made maple bedsteads such as one often
sees to-day in New England, shortened up into garden seats. There were,
in fact, seven of them, as we discovered later. They would be of the
early period, too, and probably had not been used for a good hundred
years.

But it was the item we discovered next that would take rank, I think, in
the matter of age. At the moment we did not understand it at all. It was
a section of a hickory-tree, about fifteen inches through and two feet
high, hollowed out at the top to a depth of nearly a foot. It was smooth
inside and looked as if something had been pounded in it, as in a
mortar. Presently we came upon a long, heavy hickory mallet, tapering at
one end, smoothly rounded at the other. It had a short handle, and we
thought it might have been a sort of pestle for the big mortar. But what
had those old people ground in it?

Westbury told us later; it had been their mill. By a slow, patient
process they had macerated their corn in it until it was fine enough for
bread.

The old hand-mill would undoubtedly take priority in the matter of
antiquity. Those early settlers could do without beds and chairs and
trenchers and cradles, even without spinning-wheels for a time, but they
must very quickly have bread--corn, and a place to grind it. I think the
old mill was older than the house. I think it came almost with the
earliest camp-fire.

The articles thus far mentioned were all in one end of the attic. We
were by no means through when we turned to the other end, the space
beyond the great chimney. Here under the eaves were piles of yellow
periodicals--relig