And now the loads began to arrive thick and fast. Sometimes two and three, sometimes four and five, came stringing along in unbroken procession. For every load the minister had an appreciative word, noticing and commending the especial points, and the farmers themselves, shrewdest of observers, looked at every pile and gave it their verdict. The loads were of the best, none of your crooked-stick makeshifts. Good, straight, shagbark hickory was voted none too good for the minister. Before long the yard, street, and the lower rooms of the house were swarming with cheerful faces. Then Aunt Esther began to cut the first loaf of wood-spell cake. The flip-irons were taken out of the fire and thrust into the foaming bowl. The little folks were as busy as bees in waiting on the kind farmers. They handed around the good things to eat, the cider and doughnuts, the cheese and the cake. The teacher and the minister were in the midst of merry chatting circles; their best stories were told, and roars of laughter resounded. Meantime such a woodpile was arising in the yard as never before was seen in ministerial domains! And how fresh and woodsy it smelt! Harriet eyed it with a view to future plays. There was the black birch whose flavored bark she prized as a species of confectionery. There were also gleaming logs of white birch, from the bark of which she could cut strips for her woodland parchment. Then there were massive trunks of oak affording veritable worlds of supplies for her woodsy palette. And now the sun was going down. The sleds had ceased to come, the riches of woodland treasure were all in, the whole air was full of a trembling, rose-colored light. All over the distant landscape there was not a fence to be seen, nothing but waving hollows of spotless snow, glowing with the rosy radiance and fading away into purple and lilac shadows. And the evening stars began to twinkle, one after another, keen and clear, through the frosty air, as the children all sat together in triumph on the highest perch of the woodpile.