The deacon made the boys leave their guns at home, as he had work for them to do; but Vosh joined them when they passed his house, and he carried his double-barrel on his shoulder. He was laughed at a little, but he said there was no telling when he might find a use for it.
It was a bright and sunny day, but there had been no real thaw as yet. The crust had settled with the snow, and was still firm enough for the workers to walk from tree to tree.
The first business was to tap as many as the deacon thought he could attend to; and the boys had enough to do in carrying from the sleigh the wooden troughs, and placing them where they would catch the steady drip, drip, from the sap-spiles.
"They'll fill pretty fast," said the deacon. "We've got some evening collecting before us, or I'm mistaken. We must have some kettles up as soon as we can."
He and Vosh and the hired man went right at it, and the deacon declared that he would have two more hands from the village the next day. Susie and Pen went with them, and stood watching the process.
"It's easy enough," said Pen, as she saw them struggling with one of the great iron kettles.
Two strong forked stakes were driven down in convenient places, at about eight feet apart. A stout pole was laid across each pair of stakes, resting in the forks. A kettle was swung upon each cross-pole in due season, but only three had been brought that morning. Then all was ready for building a fire under the kettle, and beginning to make sugar.
"Won't the snow melt under it?" asked Susie. "Won't it put out the fire?"
"You'll see," said Vosh. "Of course the snow melts on top, and sinks, and we keep pitching on bark and stuff, and the ashes are there. The water runs off through the snow, and all the stuff gets packed hard, and'll bear as much fire as you can build on it. It makes a cake, and freezes nights, and those cakes'll be the last things around here that melt in spring."
He was aching to get a bucket of sap into that first kettle, and a fire under it, so he could show her how it worked; but the other kettles had to be set up first. It was well that there should be enough of them to take the sap as it came, so that nobody need be tempted to throw cold sap into boiling sirup at the wrong time. A barrel was brought up afterwards, to hold any surplus that a kettle was not ready for.