Thus they spent the winter. As the spring came on, how he longed to plough up the clear spot along the beach, to plant a few peas and potatoes, or set out a currant bush or two in the warm sunny ground, under the high ledge, that every time he passed it seemed to say, “Do plant me, Ben.”
How much more difficult it was to let the wild geese alone, that were flying in vast flocks over his head! It made him half crazy to hear the guns of Uncle Isaac, John, and his father, who were letting into them right and left, as they went, bang, bang.
It was not like the gunning nowadays, when a great lazy fellow goes all day to shoot a sandpiper or a sparrow; but there was profit as well as sport in it. Nevertheless, he manfully resisted temptation, and plied the axe.
“I’ll not live another spring without a gunning float,” said he to Joe, and dismissed the matter from his thoughts.
“What fools we are!” said Joe; “we’ve not had a drink of sap yet.” As he spoke, he struck his axe with an upward blow into the body of a rock maple, and stuck a chip in the gash; he then cut down a small hemlock, took off a length, and from it made a trough. The sap ran down the chip into the trough, and in a few hours they had enough to drink.
“How good that looks!” said Joe, as he got down on his hands and knees, and looked into the luscious liquid, as clear as crystal; “and it don’t taste bad, neither.”
The first thing Joe did the next morning was to visit the trough, expecting to find it full; but it was entirely empty.
“It was half full when I left it, and it must have run fast; what a fool I was I didn’t drink it all up! I know who’s got it,” cried he, as he noticed on a little patch of snow some tracks, that looked not unlike those made by the bare feet of little children, for they had been enlarged by the thawing of the snow; “they are that coon’s wife and children, that we killed when we were hewing timber. They will be nice neighbors, Ben, when you come to plant corn here.”
“I don’t care if they do eat a little corn; I want all the neighbors I can get. It will be first rate to know just where to go and get a coon when you want one. I shall be as well to do as the grand folks in England, and have my own game preserve; besides, if they get troublesome, I can kill them all with Sailor in a week, on a place no larger than this.”
There was no vessel in that vicinity larger than a fisherman’s, or a wood coaster. It required a vessel of larger size to carry such spars, and to have hired one from a distance would have eaten up a great part of their value. Determined at any risk to save a great part of the forest, he devised and executed a most audacious plan, that he might realize every dollar from the sale of his spars, by avoiding the great expense of transportation.