There is work about making apple-butter. It is not just a simple matter of putting on some juice and letting it boil. Apples must go into it, too, a great many of them, and those apples must be peeled and sliced, and stirred and stirred eternally. And then you will find that you need more apples, more peeling and slicing, and more stirring and stirring, oh yes, indeed. Elizabeth stirred, I stirred, and Lazarus, our small colored vassal, stirred. I said if I had time I would invent an apple-butter machine, and Elizabeth declared she would never undertake such a job again, never in the world! But that was mere momentary rebellion. When it was all spiced and done and some of it spread on slices of fresh bread and butter, discontent and weariness passed, and next day she and Lazarus were making pickles and catsup and apple jelly, while Old Pop and I were hauling all the flat stones we could find and paving the wide space between the house and the stone curb which already we had built around the well. Oh, there is plenty to do when one has bought an old farm and wants to have all the good things, and the livable things; and October is the time to do them, when the mornings are brisk, and the days are balmy, and evening brings solace by the open fire. III _Lazarus's downfall was a matter of pigs_ It was Lazarus, I think, who most enjoyed the open fire. Stretched full length on the hearth, flat on his stomach, his chin in his hands, baking himself, he might have been one of his own ancestors of the African forest, for he was desperately black, and true to type. A runty little spindle-legged darky of thirteen, Lazarus had come to us second-hand, so to speak, from the county home. A family in the neighborhood was breaking up, and Lazarus's temporary adoption in the household was at an end. He had come on an errand one evening, and our interview then had led to his being transferred to our account. "I goin' away nex' week," he said. "Where are you going, Lazarus?" "Back to de home, where I come from." "What do you get for your work where you are now?" "Boa'd and clo's an' whatever dey min' to give." "What do you do?" "Bring wood, wash dishes, and whatever dey wants me to." "How would you like to come up here for a while?" He had his eye on my target-rifle as he replied, "Yassah, I'd like it--what sort o' gun yo' got?" I explained my firearm to him and let him handle it. His willingness to come grew. "Are you a pretty good boy, Lazarus?" "Oh, yassah--is--is yo' goin' to le' me shoot yo' gun ef I come?" "Very likely, but never mind that now. What happens if you're not good?" He eyed me rather furtively. "De rule is yo cain't whip," he said. "You kin only send back to de home." We agreed on these terms, and Lazarus arrived the day after the auction that closed out his former employers. As an aside I may mention that Old Pop laid off a day to attend the said auction, and bought a pink chenille portière and a Japanese screen.