Hiel got down and opened the stage door and helped the two to get in with their berries and flowers. "You owe me _one_ for this," said Hiel when he handed in Nabby's things. "Well, there's one," said Nabby, laughing and striking him across the eyes with her bunch of lilies. "Never mind, miss. I shall keep the account," said Hiel; and he gathered up the reins, resumed his high seat, made his grand entrance into Poganuc, and drew up at the parson's door. For a week thereafter it was anxiously discussed in various circles how Nabby and Dolly came to be in that stage. Where had they been? How did it happen? The obscurity of the event kept Hiel on the brain of several damsels who had nothing better to talk about. And the day closed with a royal supper of huckleberries and milk. So went a specimen number of Dolly's Saturday afternoons. CHAPTER XX GOING "A-CHESTNUTTING." The bright days of summer were a short-lived joy at Poganuc. One hardly had time to say "How beautiful!" before it was past. By September came the frosty nights that turned the hills into rainbow colors and ushered in autumn with her gorgeous robes of golden-rod and purple asters. There was still the best of sport for the children, however; for the frost ripened the shag-bark walnuts and opened the chestnut burrs, and the glossy brown chestnuts dropped down among the rustling yellow leaves and the beds of fringed blue gentians. One peculiarity of the Puritan New England _régime_ is worthy of special notice, and that is the generosity and liberality of its dealing in respect to the spontaneous growths of the soil. The chestnuts, the hickory-nuts, the butternuts--no matter upon whose land they grew--were free to whoever would gather them. The girls and boys roamed at pleasure through the woods and picked, unmolested, wherever they could find the most abundant harvest. In like manner the wild fruits--grapes, strawberries, huckleberries, and cranberries--were for many years free to the earliest comer. This is the more to be remarked in a community where life was peculiarly characterized by minute economy, where everything had its carefully ascertained money-value. Every board, nail, brad, every drop of paint, every shingle, in house or barn, was counted and estimated. In making bargains and conducting domestic economies, there was the minutest consideration of the money-value of time, labor and provision. And yet their rigidly parsimonious habit of life presented this one remarkable exception, of certain quite valuable spontaneous growths left unguarded and unappropriated.