face, but no one was more ready than
grannie to laugh to scorn the idea that any real harm could happen to
them.

So the season opened cheerfully to them all. Davie was indeed the chief
dependence now, and went about his work in a way that must have
gladdened his grandfather's heart, though he said little about it.
There was no other man about the place. They got a day's work now and
then from a neighbour, and later they must have a man to help, or
perhaps two, when the heaviest of the work should come on. But in the
meantime, Davie and his brothers did all that was to be done in the
sugar-place, and sometimes Katie helped them.

Indeed, as far as sugaring-time was concerned, they might have had help
every day and all day. There was not so much sugar made in the vicinity
of Gershom as there used to be, and the idle lads of the place enjoyed
being in the Ythan woods, in the sweet spring air and sunshine, even on
days when working hard at carrying in the sap was all that could be
done. But there was always this drawback to Davie's pleasure in their
help or their company, that his grandfather did not like either the one
or the other. It was partly his own reserved nature that made the
presence of strangers distasteful to him, and it was partly, too,
because of painful remembrances of the time when one like Davie had been
led astray by the influence of such lads. So Davie did not encourage
his friends of the village to come, as he might have done in other
circumstances.

On "sugaring-off" days there were usually plenty of visitors.
Sugaring-off is the final process of sugar-making, when the syrup into
which the sap has been made by long boiling down, is clarified and
skimmed and boiled still until it is clear as amber, ready, when cooled,
to become a solid mass of glittering sweetness. It is astonishing what
a quantity of the warm brown liquid can be consumed with pleasure, and
without satiety, and on sugaring-off days not even the half-acknowledged
dread of Mr Fleming and his stern looks and ways prevented a gathering
of young people larger than would have been welcome to less open-handed
folk. But the consumption of a few pounds of warm sugar, more or less,
was a small matter in the opinion of the old people, provided all
behaved themselves as they ought; and whatever might have been likely to
happen in Mr Fleming's absence, his presence was a sufficient check on
the most foolish among them. And even the wild