down the dry
splinters as he scratches up that dead hemlock. Now we've got him! Go
round on the other side of the tree and he will dodge back this way, and I
shall get a crack at him. But he don't though! He must have a hole up
there. Sure enough, there is one! Let me get this old bough broken in two,
and I will start him. Now be ready, and shoot him as he comes out. The old
tree is hollow all the way up; it sounds as I strike like an old
bass-drum. There! he's out! blaze away! Not that time did you hit him.
That's better! see him hang by one leg! here he comes! 'dead as a door
nail!' Thump! how he struck the ground. What a tail he has!

* * * * *

And now we are at the 'boiling place.' Two strong beech crotches are
driven into the ground, about twelve feet apart, and a strong pole is laid
over them, some five feet from the ground. The huge back-log was the butt
of that tremendous beech you see lying just at the top of the knoll. The
cauldron you see is filled with the fresh sap two or three times a day,
and before filling each time, the boiling liquid is dipped out into the
largest kettle alongside of it, and that in turn is emptied into a smaller
one, that no time may be lost in boiling it away. Taste the syrup in this
smaller kettle; it is almost molasses. Try on that 'neck-yoke' and come,
let us help carry sap before dinner. The spiles you see sticking from
augur-holes in every maple are made of young sumacs, which are sawed off
the right length, and then the pith is punched out with a wire. The clean
white-pine buckets, without bails, into which the sap drips from the
spiles, are made expressly for this use, and so is that enormous hogshead
where the sap is poured before it is strained for the cauldron. For the
present let us to dinner. Well, Herr Peter, although our dinner was laid
on a beech log, and our table-cloth nothing but a piece of coarse linen,
and our knives and forks such as Adam and Eve used before us! was it not
excellent! Wie schmackt es! _How smacked it!_ as it passed through our
devouring jaws; and how sweet was the pure spring water from the bright
tin dipper! Now for a quiet smoke on the plank settle in the bough-house,
while Joe and Hiram are getting ready to 'sugar off.' Here, if there comes
up a storm, they sit and watch the kettles; and sometimes when the weather
is clear they sit up all night. So at last you _do_ love a cigar better
than a meerschaum? I confes