“Something left—wasn’t there, Zeke?” said he, turning to his comrade, who was now pouring cold sap into the “heater.”
“Enough for one, I guess,” said Zeke; and, taking a bucket and a wooden bowl from under the hemlock, he produced a slab of johnny-cake from the former, and, pouring out something like a quart of maple sirup into the latter, bade me “go ahead.”
I did so without further invitation, and never made a better supper, the programme being to dip the bread into the sirup, mouthful by mouthful.
The boys were now preparing their night’s wood.
There had been, they said, “an excellent run of sap” during the last few days. The kettles were kept boiling day and night, steadily. It was truly a wild scene. Clouds of steam gushed up from the surging kettles; and the fires gleamed brighter as the darkness deepened, while all about us seemed a wall of blackness. But my long tramp had thoroughly tired me down, and my recollections of the remainder of the evening are a little drowsy, though I learned in the course of it that the names of the two youthful sugar-makers, upon whose camp I had stumbled, were Zeke Murch and Sam Bubar; and I also helped to take off a large kettle of hot sirup, which we set in a snow-drift, two or three rods from the fire, to cool. This done, I was soon asleep, rolled up in an old coverlet, and knew very little till, hearing voices, I opened my eyes to the fact that the sun was staring me in the face from over the eastward ridge, as if surprised at my sloth.
Hastily unrolling myself, I saw Sam and Zeke out at the kettle we had set in the snow, pointing and excitedly discussing something.
“Old scamp!” exclaimed Zeke. “What work he’s made here!”
“All this sugar gone—spoiled!” cried Sam.
“What is it?” said I, going out to them. “What’s the matter?”
“Why,” said Sam, turning and laughing in spite of his vexation, “something has guzzled up ’most the whole of this ‘honey’ we set out here last night. Only see there!”