Our own spring, by what was our mischance, lay at a distance from our village near to the border of the Chauci, of whom I have spoken, and was a vast temptation to them. Our village would assuredly have been built beside it but that the spring issued from a little rise of land within the edge of a great marsh, with a damp lowland all about, such location as might in no wise serve for a proper dwelling place. There was no shelter near, and the winds came harshly from the distant sea. Nevertheless, we builded a great shed beside the spring as a shelter in time of the salt-making, and raised a barricade of logs upon the forest side as some means of defense in case an enemy should make an onslaught. As often as we needed it the most accustomed of the tribe would make an encampment by the spring and there prepare the salt, though in a way unlike that of our ancestors, who had been accustomed to get the salt in a most curious manner, building a fire of logs and quenching the flames with the salt water, and when it was out, raking away the ashy crust found clinging to the embers. A better and far easier way was ours, for we now had the kettles in which to do the heating and condensing of the water into what we wanted. In autumn, when the time came for putting aside the fish and meat for the winter, a large company would go from the village to the salt-making, and the gathering was made almost a festival. There had always been sufficient force either with or of the workers, and no evil had ever come to them, though, at other times, the Chauci had once or twice invaded the spring and made salt there unknown to us. They also possessed a spring, but it was not as generous of flow as ours nor so convenient for those who lived the nearest to us. There had been murmurings and distrust over this intrusion of the Chauci, but there had followed no encounter, though the invasion was in violation of all tribal law, and though we had often come in conflict with the Chauci.