It was a very pretty scene. The sap-boilers had planted themselves near the cellar door on the other side of the house from the kitchen door and the wood-yard; the casks and tubs for syrup being under cover there; and there they had made a most picturesque work-place. Two strong crotched sticks were stuck in the ground some six or eight feet apart and a pole laid upon them, to which by the help of some very rustic hooks two enormous iron kettles were slung. Under them a fine fire of smallish split sticks was doing duty, kept in order by a couple of huge logs which walled it in on the one side and on the other. It was a dark night, and the fire painted all this in strong lights and shadows; threw a faint fading Aurora like light over the snow, beyond the shade of its log barriers; glimmered by turns upon the paling of the garden fence, whenever the dark figures that were passing and repassing between gave it a chance; and invested the cellar-opening and the outstanding corner of the house with striking and unwonted dignity, in a light that revealed nothing except to the imagination. Nothing was more fancifully dignified or more quaintly travestied by that light than the figures around it, busy and flitting about and shewing themselves in every novel variety of grouping and colouring. There was Earl Douglass, not a hair different from what he was every day in reality, but with his dark skin and eyes, and a hat that like its master had concluded to abjure all fashions and perhaps for the same reason, he looked now like any bandit and now in a more pacific view could pass for nothing less than a Spanish shepherd at least, with an iron ladle in lieu of crook. There was Dr. Quackenboss, who had come too, determined as Earl said, "to keep his eend up," excessively bland and busy and important, the fire would throw his one-sidedness of feature into such aspects of gravity or sternness that Fleda could make nothing of him but a poor clergyman or a poor schoolmaster alternately. Philetus, who was kept handing about a bucket of sap or trudging off for wood, defied all comparison; he was Philetus still; but when Barby came once or twice and peered into the kettle her strong features with the handkerchief she always wore about her head were lit up into a very handsome gypsy. Fleda stood some time unseen in the shadow of the house to enjoy the sight, and then went forward on the same principle that a sovereign princess shews herself to her army, to grace and reward the labours of her servants. The doctor was profuse in enquiries after her health and Earl informed her of the success of the day.
"We've had first rate weather," he said;--"I don't want to see no better weather for sugar-makin'; it's as good kind o' weather as you need to have. It friz everythin' up tight in the night, and it thew in the sun this mornin' as soon as the sun was anywhere; the trees couldn't do no better than they have done. I guess we ha'n't got much this side o' two hundred gallon--I ain't sure about it, but that's what I think; and there's nigh two hundred gallon we've fetched down; I'll qualify to better than a hundred and fifty, or a hundred and sixty either. We should ha' had more yet if Mr. Skillcorn hadn't managed to spill over one cask of it--I reckon he wanted it for sass for his chicken."
"Now, Mr. Douglass!"--said Philetus, in a comical tone of deprecation.
"It is an uncommonly fine lot of sugar trees," said the doctor, "and they stand so on the ground as to give great felicities to the oxen."
"Now, Fleda," Earl went on, busy all the while with his iron ladle in dipping the boiling sap from one kettle into the other,--"you know how this is fixed when we've done all we've got to do with it?--it must be strained out o' this biler into a cask or a tub or somethin' 'nother,--anythin' that'll hold it,--and stand a day or so;--you may strain it through a cotton cloth, or through a woollen cloth, or through any kind of a cloth!--and let it stand to settle; and then when it's biled down--Barby knows about bilin' down--you can tell when it's comin' to the sugar when the yellow blobbers rises thick to the top and puffs off, and then it's time to try it in cold water,--it's best to be a leetle the right side o' the sugar and stop afore it's done too much, for the molasses will dreen off afterwards--"
"It must be clarified in the commencement," put in the doctor.
"O' course it must be clarified," said Earl,--"Barby knows about clarifyin'--that's when you first put it on--you had ought to throw in a teeny drop o' milk fur to clear it,--milk's as good as a'most anything,--or if you can get it calf's blood's better "--
"Eggs would be a more preferable ingredient on the present occasion, I presume," said the doctor. "Miss Ringgan's delicacy would be--a--would shrink from--a--and the albumen of eggs will answer all the same purpose."
"Well anyhow you like to fix it," said Earl,--"eggs or calf's blood--I won't quarrel with you about the eggs, though I never heerd o' blue ones afore, 'cept the robin's and bluebird's--and I've heerd say the swamp black bird lays a handsome blue egg, but I never happened to see the nest myself;--and there's the chippin' sparrow,--but you'd want to rob all the birds' nests in creation to get enough of 'em, and they ain't here in sugar time, nother; but anyhow any eggs'll do I s'pose if you can get 'em--or milk'll do if you ha'n't nothin' else--and after it is turned out into the barrel you just let it stand still a spell till it begins to grain and look clean on top"--
"May I suggest an improvement?" said the doctor. "Many persons are of the opinion that if you take and stir it up well from the bottom for a length of time it will help the coagulation of the particles. I believe that is the practice of Mr. Plumfield and others."