''Cos 'twill leak every single drop. Yer troughs must be white pine or black ash; an' as ye'll want to fix fifty or sixty on 'em at all events, that half-dozen ain't much of a loss.'

'Couldn't they be made serviceable anyhow?' asked Robert, unwilling quite to lose the labour of his hands.

'Wal, you might burn the inside to make the grain closer: I've heerd tell on that dodge. If you warn't so far from the "Corner," we could fix our sugar together, an' make but one bilin' of it, for you'll want a team, an' you don't know nothin' about maples.' Zack's eyes were askance upon Robert. 'We might 'most as well go shares—you give the sap, an' I the labour,' he added. 'I'll jest bring up the potash kettle on the sled a Monday, an' we'll spill the trees. You cut a hundred little spouts like this: an' have you an auger? There now, I guess that's fixed.'

But he turned back after a few yards to say—'Since yer hand's in, you 'most might jest as well fix a score troughs for me, in case some o' mine are leaked:' and away he went.

'That old sharper will be sure to have the best of the bargain,' thought Robert. 'It's just his knowledge pitted against my inexperience. One satisfaction is that I am learning every day.' And he went on with his troughs and spouts until near sundown, when he and Arthur went to look at the Indian encampment, and see what progress was being made there.

'I can't imagine,' said the latter, 'why the tree which produces only a watery juice in Europe should produce a diluted syrup in Canada.'

'Holt said something of the heat of the March sun setting the sap in motion, and making it sweet. You feel how burning the noon is, these days.'

'That's a statement of a fact, but not an explanation,' said the cavilling Arthur. 'Why should a hot sun put sugar in the sap?'

Robert had no answer, nor has philosophy either.

The Indians had already tapped their trees, and placed underneath each orifice a sort of rough bowl, for catching the precious juice as it trickled along a stick inserted to guide its flow. These bowls, made of the semicircular excrescences on a species of maple, serve various uses in the cooking line, in a squaw's ménage, along with basins and boxes of the universally useful birchen bark. When the sap has been boiled down into syrup, and clarified, it is again transferred to them to crystallize, and become solid in their keeping.