venison and smoked ham, hung upon poles at the top of the
room. The wide fireplace and large, open chimney stood at one side. The
embers smouldered between the great andirons, ready to be kindled for
preparing the evening meal. Aloft, and reached by a ladder that rested
against an opening, was the chamber where the family used to sleep. This
was the happy home of Robert Keyes, where comfort and busy contentment
reigned.

On the afternoon in question two older daughters were at play with
little Lucy under the trellis of hop-vines that shaded their mother from
the sun. Those were not the days of carpets or of painted floors. Neat
housewives would sprinkle the boards with clean white sand; and this,
under the tread of feet, would scour the wood and then be swept away.
The brooms were made by stripping the sapling birch and tying these
strips in a bundle over the end of the stick, or by tying cedar or
hemlock boughs at the end of a pointed handle. Housekeepers
were unacquainted with boughten brushes and corn-brooms and
sweeping-machines.

At their mother's call the two older girls started with a bucket to go
to the shore of the lake to fetch some sand for the floor. Little Lucy,
thus left alone, soon tired of her play, and wandered away among the
vines and the corn around the door, till she came to the path that led
to the lake. She followed her sisters a long way behind them, and was
never again seen by her friends.

Soon the sun had disappeared behind the summit of the mountain, and the
deepening shadows were beginning to creep towards the cabin. The mother
had put away her spinning-wheel, and the smoke was curling up from out
the wide-mouthed chimney, in preparation of her supper. The farmer and
his sons had left the field and gone to a little blacksmith shop a few
rods down the hill, where he had mended a broken buck-scythe. The two
girls had joined them there; and now they all came trooping together to
the house. The boys and their father were washing their hands and faces
from the sweat of the forge and the burnt logs. The mother was busy with
her cooking. The girls had put away the bucket of sand and gone out to
play, when they missed Lucy, and began to search for her among the hills
of corn. Not finding her, they came back to the log cabin and told their
mother. She thought the little girl must be near, and sent the sisters
to look again, while she arranged the wooden plates and the pewter
dippers and the iron k