COLD weather and the pork-packing season had arrived, and the lower floor of Somerton's warehouse was a busier place than the store. At one side "dressed" hogs, unloaded from farmers' wagons, were piled high; in the centre a man with a cleaver lopped the heads and feet from the carcasses, and divided the remainder into hams, shoulders, and sides, which another man trimmed into commercial shape; a third packed the product in salted layers on the other side. At the rear of the room two men cut the trimmings, carefully separating the lean from the fat, and with the latter filled, once in two or three hours, some huge iron kettles which sat in a brick furnace in the corner. At similar intervals the contents of the kettles were transferred to the hopper of a large press, not unlike a cider press, and soon an odorous wine-colored fluid streamed into a tank below, from which it was ladled through tin funnels into large, closely hooped barrels. The room was cold, despite the furnace; the walls, windows, and ceiling were reminiscent of the dust and smell of many pork-packing seasons. Early in the season Philip had dubbed the pork-packing floor "Bluebeard's Chamber," and warned his wife never to enter it. After a single glance one day, through the street door of the warehouse, Grace assured her husband that the prohibition was entirely unnecessary. She also said that she never had been fond of pork, but that in the future she would eschew ham, bacon, sausage, lard, and all other pork products. When the sound of rapid, heavy hammering was audible in the Somerton sitting room and parlor, and when Grace asked where it came from, Philip replied, "The pork-house;" the cooper was packing barrels of sides, hams, or shoulders for shipment, or tightening the hoops of lard-barrels which were inclined to leak. When Grace wondered whence came the great flakes of soot on table-linen which had been hung out of doors to dry, Philip replied, "The pork-house;" probably the fire in the furnace was drawing badly and smoking too much. Frequently, when she went to the store and asked Caleb where her husband was, the reply would be, "The pork-house." If Philip reached home late for a meal, and Grace asked what had kept him, he was almost certain to reply, "The pork-house," and if, as frequently occurred later in the season, he retired so late that Grace thought she had slept through half the night, he groaned, in answer to her inevitable question, "The pork-house."