THE attitude in which the plump baby hung limply over the woman’s left arm looked most uncomfortable. The baby, however, seemed highly content. Both his sticky fists clutched firmly a generous “chunk” of new maple-sugar, which he mumbled with his toothless gums, while his big eyes, widening like an owl’s, stared about through the dusk with a placid intentness.
From the woman’s left hand dangled an old tin lantern containing a scrap of tallow candle, whose meagre gleam flickered hither and thither apprehensively among the huge shadows of the darkening wood. In her right hand the woman carried a large tin bucket, half filled with fresh-run maple-sap. By the glimmer of the ineffectual candle, she moved wearily from one great maple to another, emptying the birch-bark cups that hung from the 205 little wooden taps driven into the trunks. The night air was raw with the chill of thawing snow, and carried no sound but the soft tinkle of the sap as it dript swiftly into the birchen cups. The faint, sweet smell of the sap seemed to cling upon the darkness. The candle flared up for an instant, revealing black, mysterious aisles among the ponderous tree-trunks, then guttered down and almost went out, the darkness seeming to swoop in upon its defeat. The woman examined it, found that it was all but done, and glanced nervously over her shoulder. Then she made anxious haste to empty and replace the last of the birchen cups before she should be left in darkness to grope her way back to the cabin.
The sap was running freely that spring, and the promise of a great sugar-harvest was not to be ignored. Dave Stone’s house and farm lay about three miles distant, across the valley of the “Tin Kittle,” from the maple-clad ridge of forest wherein he had his sugar-camp. The camp consisted of a little cabin or “shack” of rough boards and an open shed with a rude but spacious fireplace and chimney to accommodate the great iron pot in which the sap was boiled down into sugar. While 206 the sap was running freely, the pot had to be kept boiling uniformly and the thickening sap kept skimmed clean of the creaming scum; and therefore, during the season, some one had to be always living in the camp.
Dave Stone had built his camp at an opening in the woods, in such a position that, from its own little window in the rear, he could look out across the wide valley of the “Tin Kittle” to a rigid grove of firs behind which, shielded from the nor’easters, lay his low frame house, and red-doored barn, and wide, liberal sheds. The distance was only about three miles, or less, from the house to the sugar-camp. But Dave Stone was terribly proud of the prosperous little homestead which he had carved for himself out of the unbroken wilderness on the upper “Tin Kittle,” and more than proud of the slim, gray-eyed wife and three sturdy youngsters to whom that homestead gave happy shelter. On the spring nights when he had to stay over at the camp, he liked to be able to see the grove that hid his home.
It chanced one afternoon, just in the height of the sap-running, that Dave Stone was called suddenly in to the settlement on a piece of business 207 that could not wait overnight. A note which he had endorsed for a friend had been allowed to go to protest, and Dave was excited.
“Ther’ ain’t nothin’ fer it, Mandy,” said he, “but fer ye to take the baby an’ go right over to the camp fer the night, an’ keep an eye on this bilin’.”
“But, father,” protested his wife, in a doubtful voice, “how kin I leave Lidy an’ Joe here alone?”
“Oh, there ain’t nothin’ goin’ to bother them, an’ Lidy ’most ten year old!” insisted Dave, who was in a hurry. “Don’t fret, mother. I’ll be back long afore mornin’!”
As the children had no objection to being left, Mrs. Stone suffered herself to be persuaded. In fact, she went to her new duty with a certain zest, as a break in the monotony of her days. She had lent a hand often enough at the sugar-making to be familiar with the task awaiting her, and it was with an unwonted gaiety that she set out on what appeared to her almost in the light of a little adventure.