e greater number of the girls, living within a
radius of a few miles of the Harding cabin, did not come until after
dinner, having to remain at home to help their own mothers before
attending the merrymaking.

And what a merrymaking it was! Truly, all work and no play makes Jack a
dull boy, and in a country and at a time when all young people had to
work almost as hard as their parents, the pioneer fathers and mothers
encouraged the young folk to mix pleasure well with their tasks. Indeed,
it was a system followed by the older folks as well on many occasions.
Corn-shuckings, apple-parings, log-rollings, sugaring-off--all these
tasks even down to "hog-killings"--were made the excuse for social
gatherings. The idea of helping one another in the heavier tasks of
their existence on the frontier was likewise combined in this. Many
hands make light work, and a cabin which would have kept one family busy
for a fortnight was often put up and the roof of drawn shingles laid in
a day's time, by the neighbors of the proprietor of the new structure
all taking hold of the work.

So in this stump burning, which usually followed upon the clearing of a
new piece of ground. More than a year before Jonas Harding had begun on
this lot, with the intention of clearing it entirely and in the end
having a handsome piece of grass-land along the edge of the creek. In
the fall a fire had run over the piece and now the stumps were mostly
dead, although the fire-weed was waist high. Some of the stumps had
already been pulled up, but many were too large for the muscles of the
young Hardings and it was the help of their companions to pull these
stumps to which they looked forward to-day.

With patience remarkable in such youngsters, Enoch and Bryce had dug
around the base of all the big stumps, had cut off the long side roots,
and when possible had dug beneath and cut the tap-root of the tree, thus
making the final extraction of the big stumps all the easier of
accomplishment. They were piled up and set burning, and round these
bonfires the boys danced like wild Indians and kept the fires fed up to
noon-time. Between the sunshine and the flames the youngsters were all
pretty well scorched by then.

But before the horn was blown for dinner there were two arrivals on the
scene, one joyfully welcomed by all and the other rather unexpected but
not less welcome to many of the boys. 'Siah Bolderwood entered the
clearing from a forest-path at almost th