"There!" said he talking to himself, "if that turnip was a round piece of wood, and if there was clay on it, 'twould be the same thing as the potter's wheel that Uncle Seth told about, that didn't have any crank, only two wheels."
The same principle, Sammy meant.
"I haven't got any tools, nor any thing to make a wheel of: so I couldn't make one."
The tears sprung to the poor boy's eyes; and hearing his mother's step on the door-stone, and not wanting to have her question him about his tears, he opened the window-shutter, leaped out, made for the hovel, and sat down there. He had left in haste; and, as Mrs. Sumerford set down her milk-pail, she saw her wheel upside down, with a turnip on the end of the spindle. "What's all this!" pulling off the turnip. "Samuel, Samuel Sumerford! Did ever anybody see or hear tell of such a boy? It's a mercy that he didn't break the wheel-head. What satisfaction could there be in turning that wheel upside down, and sticking a turnip on the spindle?"
The little fellow's reflections were of a sombre cast. "There ain't no good times now as there used to be. I had a bear, and he was killed; Tony had one, and he was killed; and now baby's bear, that was the best most of the whole, is killed too. I had a tame coon, and they killed him; a cosset lamb, and he died; and the Indians have come, and carried off Tony who I loved better than the bear or coon or cosset lamb. The Indians keep coming, and killin' our folks; and Alice Proctor thinks they'll kill us all some time."
Sammy's thoughts now seemed to take a sudden turn; for at once he jumped up, and ran at his utmost speed to the Cuthbert house. His mother, looking after him in amazement, said,—
"I don't know about this pottery business: the child don't seem one mite as he used to. I hope he won't lose his wits."
Rushing up garret, he brought down part of a flax-wheel; that is, the bench, the wheel, and the posts on which the wheel was hung, the rest having been carried off by Cuthbert. Sammy's spirits rose with a bound: he thought, if he only had a wheel, he could manage the rest.
Where should he get boards to make a bench? for boards were precious things in the settlement. He recollected that Mr. McDonald had in his house a meal-chest, and partitions made of boards, and some milk-shelves; and that some of them were used for making coffins to bury the family in, as there was not time to manufacture boards with the whip-saw. But he thought they might not all have been used; the house stood empty, and was rotting down.
Away ran the excited lad for Archie, made a confidant of him, and wanted him to go to the McDonald house to see if there were not some boards there, and, if so, get them.