is was the best of sons, that did not blind him to the fact
that the irritability of age and illness were fully developed in his
mother, and he alone seemed to have the power of calming her. She
liked Sylvia at first, but became frantically jealous of her as soon
as she suspected her son's attachment. So the summer rolled away.
Hannah and her little flock tilled their small farm and gathered
plenteous harvest. Mindful of last year's experience, they raised
brood after brood of chickens, and planted extra acres of corn for
their feeding, so that when autumn came, with its vivid, splendid
days, its keen winds and turbulent skies, the new chicken yard, which
the boys had worked at through the summer, with its wattled fence, its
own tiny spring, and lofty covered roofs, swarmed with chickens,
ducks, and turkeys. Many a dollar was brought home about Thanksgiving
time for the fat fowls sold in Litchfield and Nepash; but dollars
soon vanished in buying winter clothes for so many children, or
rather, in buying wool to spin and weave for them. Mahala Green, the
village tailoress, came to fashion the garments, and the girls sewed
them. Uncouth enough was their aspect; but fashion did not yet reign
in Nepash, and if they were warm, who cared for elegance? Not Hannah's
rosy, hearty, happy brood. They sang and whistled and laughed with a
force and freedom that was kin to the birds and squirrels among whom
they lived; and Hannah's kindly, cheery face lit up as she heard them,
while a half sigh told that her husband and her soldier boys were
still wanting to her perfect contentment.

At last they were all housed snugly for winter. The woodpile was
larger than ever before, and all laid up in the shed, beyond which a
rough shelter of chinked logs had been put up for the chickens, to
which their roosts and nest boxes, of coarse wicker, boards nailed
together, hollow bark from the hemlock logs, even worn-out tin pails,
had all been transferred. The cellar had been well banked from the
outside, and its darksome cavern held good store of apples, pork, and
potatoes. There was dried beef in the stairway, squashes in the
cupboard, flour in the pantry, and the great gentle black cow in the
barn was a wonderful milker. In three weeks Thanksgiving would come,
and even Hannah's brave heart sank as she thought of her absent
husband and boys; and their weary faces rose up before her as she
numbered over to herself her own causes for thankfulness, as