"I'm glad I didn't know it," said the captain earnestly; "thoroughly and completely glad I didn't know it. I should have yelled all the skin off my throat, if I'd have known he was after me with a gun."
After Harry had been home an hour or two, and Kate had somewhat recovered from her transports of joy, and everybody in the village had heard all about everything that had happened, and Captain Caseby had declared, in the bosom of his family, that he would never go out into the woods again at night without keeping up a steady "holler," Harry remembered that he had left his sumac-bag somewhere in the woods. Hard work for a whole day and a night, and nothing to show for it! Rather a poor prospect for Aunt Matilda.
CHAPTER VII.
Aunt Matilda's Christmas.
When Harry and Kate held council that afternoon, their affairs looked a little discouraging. Kate's sumac was weighed, and it was only seven pounds! Seven whole cents, if they took it out in trade, or five and a quarter cents, as Kate calculated, if they took cash. A woman as large as Aunt Matilda could not be supported on that kind of an income, it was plain enough.
But our brave boy and girl were not discouraged. Harry went after his bag the next day, and found it with about ten pounds of leaves in it. Then, for a week or two, he and his sister worked hard and sometimes gathered as much as twenty-five pounds of leaves in a day. But they had their bad days, when there was a great deal of walking and very little picking.
And then, in due course of time, school began and the sumac season was at an end, for the leaves are not merchantable after they begin to turn red, although they are then a great deal prettier to look at.
But then Harry went out early in the morning, and on Saturdays, and shot hares and partridges, and Kate began to sell her chickens, of which she had twenty-seven (eighteen died natural deaths, or were killed by weasels during the summer), they found that they made more money than they could have made by sumac gathering.