of the pork. After the legs
and shoulders have lain long enough in salt, I mean to try if I cannot
smoke them, and if I do, I'll then smoke some bacon. Won't that be
jolly, Alice? Won't you like to have a great piece of bacon hanging up
there, and only to have to get on a stool to cut off what you want, when
Edward and I come home hungry and you've nothing to give us to eat?"

"I shall be very glad to have it, and I think so will you too, by the
way you talk."

"I shall, I assure you. Jacob, didn't you say the ash-sticks were the
best to smoke bacon with?"

"Yes, boy: when you are ready, I'll tell you how to manage. My poor
mother used to smoke very well up this very chimney."

"I think that will do," said Humphrey, letting his hazel stick spring
up, after he had bent it down, "but to-morrow I shall find out."

"But what is it for, Humphrey?" said Edith.

"Go away, puss, and play with your kitten," replied Humphrey, putting
away his tools and his materials in a corner; "I've a great deal on my
hands now, but I must kill my pigs before I think of anything else."

The next day Jacob took the venison into Lymington, and brought back the
salt and other articles required. The pigs were then killed, and salted
down under Jacob's directions; his rheumatism did not allow him to
assist, but Humphrey and Edward rubbed in the salt, and Alice took the
pieces of pork away to the tub when they were finished. Humphrey had
been out the day before with the unknown article he had been so long
about. The next morning he went out early before breakfast, and when he
returned he brought a hare in his hand, which he laid on the table.

"There," said he, "my springe has answered, and this is the fruits of
it. Now I'll make some more, and we will have something by way of a
change for dinner."

They were very much pleased with Humphrey's success, and he was not a
little proud of it.

"How did you find out how to make it?"

"Why, I read in the old book of travels which Jacob brought home with
him last summer, of people catching rabbits and hares in some way like
this; I could not make it out exactly, but it gave me the idea."

We ought to have told the reader that Jacob had more than once brought
home an old book or two which he had picked up, or had given him, and
that these had been occasionally looked into by Humphrey and Edward, but
only now and then, as they had too much to do to find much time for
reading, although s