No finer day could have been selected for that particular outing than the one that dawned the next morning. The air was mild and the sun shining brightly. The only drawback was the walking, as the roads were full of mud in some places and melting slush in others, but as they were all warmly shod that made little difference.
Pee Wee groaned occasionally as he lagged along in the rear, but they had no fear of his dropping out. It would have taken a good deal more than a three-mile walk to keep Pee Wee away from that sugar camp after Skeets’s description.
“There it is,” cried Fred at last, pointing to a big grove of trees in the rear of a farmhouse.
Pee Wee sniffed the air.
“Seems to me I can smell the sugar cooking from here,” he said joyously.
They left the road now, took a short cut across the fields and soon entered the grove of maples.
It was an extensive grove, containing several hundred of the stately trees. Into each one of these that had reached their full growth a hole had been made, a spigot driven in, and a bright tin pail suspended from each spigot. Into these pails the sap was falling with a musical drip so that a tinkling murmur ran through the grove as though some one were gently touching the strings of a zither.
An old horse attached to a low sled was shambling slowly along through the woodland paths, stopping at each tree. The driver would empty the pail into one of several large cans that the sled contained, replace the pail and go on to the next.
“Seems almost a shame to tap those splendid trees,” murmured Mouser. “It’s almost like bleeding them to death.”
“Doesn’t do them a bit of harm,” explained Skeets cheerfully. “The farmers take good care not to drain out more sap than the tree can spare.”