"Now I'll bake a mess of beans in it, just to christen it. Girls, you help me pick over the beans; and I'll put 'em on to parboil afore we sit down to dinner, and have 'em for supper. I want you all to stay to dinner and supper both. The boys can play with Sammy; and the girls and I'll make some buttermilk biscuit for supper, and a custard pudding. "Girls, I'm going to draw a web of linen into the loom; and you can help me, and learn how; play with the baby and the bear: baby's bear'll play real good; he's a good creature. He'll tear all the bark off the tree with his claws; but, when he's playing with baby, he'll pull 'em all into the fur, so his paw is soft as can be. Harry, Elick, and Enoch'll be home from the scout; and what think they'll say when they come to know that Sammy's made a pot, and his mother's baked beans in it?" "Mother, may I ask Uncle Seth to come to supper? I want him to see the pot, 'cause he told me how to fix the clay, and bake it." "Sartain: I'd like to have Mr. Seth come every night in the week. This pot isn't glazed, to be sure; but I'll rub it with tallow and beeswax: I've heard my husband say that was the way the Indians used to do their pots." "Mr. Seth said the Indians used to make pots, mother." "Sartain, dear, the Indians clear back; but now they get iron ones of the white folks, and people reckon they've lost the art. If you look on the side of the river where the old Indian town used to be, where you go to get arrow-heads, you'll find bottoms of pots washing out of the banks, and sometimes half of one." The good woman stuffed the pot thoroughly with tallow and wax, dusted some flour over it, and put it in the beans and pork. Mrs. Sumerford had no oven; but that did not in the least interfere with baking the beans. With the kitchen shovel she threw back the ashes and coals on the hearth, and took up a flat stone under which was a square hole dug in the hearth (the house had no cellar), lined with flat stones. Into this hole she put wood and hot coals till it was thoroughly heated: then she cleaned the cavity, put in the pot, covered it with hot coals, and left the beans to bake; for there never was a better place,--that is, to give them the right flavor. The boys could not leave till this important operation was performed; when, finding the mill was in motion, they concluded to go there, and invite Uncle Seth to supper, and, after having a swim, and a sail on the raft, escort him to Mrs. Sumerford's. The mill had not yet ceased to be a novelty; and they loved dearly to watch the grain as it dropped from the hopper into the shoe, and from the shoe into the hole in the upper stone.