molasses for dinner, and there'll be some
cold with milk for supper, and we shan't have any cooking to do at
all."

They went round to the kitchen door. Rachel stopped in the wood-shed,
and the tears rushed to her eyes.

"Dear father! How he has worked over that wood, early and late, to
spare us!"

We will not revive Dorothy's struggles with the farm-work and with the
boys. They were an isolated family at the mill-house; their peculiar
faith isolated them still more, and they were twelve miles from meeting
and the settlement of Friends at Stony Valley. Dorothy's pride kept her
silent about her needs, lest they might bring reproach upon her father
among the neighbors, who would not be likely to feel the urgency of his
spiritual summons.

The summer heats came on apace and the nights grew shorter. It seemed
to Dorothy that she had hardly stretched out her tired young body and
forgotten her cares in the low attic bedroom, before the east was
streaked with light and the birds were singing in the apple-trees,
whose falling blossoms drifted in at the window.

One day in early June, Friend Barton's flock of sheep--consisting of
nine experienced ewes, six yearlings, and a sprinkling of close-curled
lambs whose legs had not yet come into mature relations with their
bodies--were gathered in a little railed inclosure, beside the stream
which flowed into the "mill head." It was supplied by the waste from
the pond, and when the gate was shut, rambled easily over the gray
slate pebbles, with here and there a fall, just forcible enough to
serve as a douche bath for a well-grown sheep. The victims were panting
in their heavy fleeces, and their hoarse, plaintive tremolo mingled
with the ripple of the water and the sound of young voices in a frolic.
Dorothy had divided her forces for the washing to the best advantage.
The two elder boys stood in the stream to receive the sheep, which she,
with the help of little Jimmy, caught and dragged to the bank.

The boys were at work now upon an elderly ewe, while Dorothy stood on
the brink of the stream, braced against an ash sapling, dragging at the
fleece of a beautiful but reluctant yearling. Her bare feet were
incased in a pair of moccasins which laced around the ankle; her
petticoats were kilted, and her broad hat bound down with a ribbon; one
sleeve was rolled up, the other had been sacrificed in a scuffle in the
sheep-pen. The new candidate for immersion stood bleating and
trembling