head of the household.
But he was still enough of a boy to enjoy the party to the full.

There was an old hovel near the house, but nearer the river bank, which
their father had first erected--even before building the house
itself--when he came to the ox-bow, and for years this hovel had
sheltered the cattle. But the fall before he died the pioneer had
erected a new and better stable and shed, quite handy to the house. The
children, therefore, had long considered this hovel their own especial
playhouse. At spare moments Enoch and Bryce built a stone and clay
chimney and laid a good hearth in the old structure, and now they
planned to have the party here, where they could do quite as they
pleased.

The girls had scoured the woods for beech, hazel, and hickory nuts, and
Robbie Baker came over on his horse with nigh a bushel of peeled
chestnuts which his father brought him from Manchester way after the
first frost. Then, there were potatoes to roast and a wild turkey which
Nuck had shot two days before and hung in the smoke-house. The bird was
not plucked, but after being entrailed was stuffed with chestnuts to
give it a flavor and then rolled in the tub of sticky clay brought up
from the creek bottom. This great ball was put in the fire early so that
by supper-time it would be done to a turn. The pigs' tails had all been
saved and cleaned, too, and being likewise rolled in clay were baked in
the ashes.

The girls had brought flour bread and made Johnny-cake, and although
there was no tablecloth, the long board table was roomy and fairly
groaned under the good things heaped upon it. The ball of mud, all hard
and red now and cracked like a badly burned brick, was rolled out upon
the hearth and Enoch broke it with one blow of the axe. The hard shell
fell apart and to the burned clay adhered every feather and pin-quill of
the great gobbler which would not have weighed an ounce less than
twenty-five pounds. And the flesh was done to a turn.

In the midst of the good time, while the fun waxed furious, the door of
the hovel opened and there stood in the opening the tall, slim figure of
Crow Wing. As he had come unbidden to the stump burning, so he came now
unexpectedly to this frolic. The white children welcomed him
boisterously, for his people had moved away from the Walloomscoik and
for months he had not been seen near Bennington. But Crow Wing had
evidently not come to join in the merrymaking. His face was impassive
and