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 Willis had seen him pick them up.
"What if they did?" I asked. But I could get nothing further from him.
It was that very evening I think, after we got home, that we saw the notice the tax collector had put in the county paper announcing the sale at public auction of the Cranston farm on the following Thursday, for delinquent taxes. The paper had come that night, and Theodora read the notice aloud at supper. The announcement briefly described the farm property, and among other values mentioned five hundred cords of rock-maple wood ready to cut and go to market.
"That's that old sugar lot up by the big ledge, where Willis and Ben were making syrup," said I. "Ad, whatever did you do with that pocketful of auger chips?"