"No one can sing my psalm for me, Reward must come from labor, I'll sow for peace, and reap in truth God's mercy and His favor!" Martha was the chief musician of the Community, and had composed many hymns and tunes--some of them under circumstances that she believed might entitle them to be considered directly inspired. Her clear full voice filled the kitchen and floated out into the air after Susanna, as she called Sue and, darning-basket in hand, walked across the road to the great barn. The herb-garden was one place where she could think out her life, although no decision had as yet been born of those thoughtful mornings. Another spot for meditation was the great barn, relic of the wonderful earlier days, and pride of the present Settlement. A hundred and seventy-five feet long and three and a half stories high, it dominated the landscape. First, there was the cellar, where all the refuse fell, to do its duty later on in fertilizing the farm lands; then came the first floor, where the stalls for horses, oxen, and cows lined the walls on either side. Then came the second floor, where hay was kept, and to reach this a bridge forty feet long was built on stone piers ten feet in height, sloping up from the ground to the second story. Over the easy slope of this bridge the full haycarts were driven, to add their several burdens to the golden haymows. High at the top was an enormous grain room, where mounds of yellow corn-ears reached from floor to ceiling; and at the back was a great window opening on Massabesic Pond and Knights' Hill, with the White Mountains towering blue or snow-capped in the distance. There was an old-fashioned, list-bottomed, straight-backed Shaker chair in front of the open window, a chair as uncomfortable as Shaker doctrines to the daughter of Eve, and there Susanna often sat with her sewing or mending, Sue at her feet building castles out of corn-cobs, plaiting the husks into little mats, or taking out basting threads from her mother's work. "My head feels awfully undressed without my curls, Mardie," she said. "I'm most afraid Fardie won't like the looks of me; do you think we ought to have asked him before we shingled me?--He does _despise_ un-pretty things so!" "I think if we had asked him he would have said, 'Do as you think best.'" "He always says that when he doesn't care what you do," observed Sue, with one of her startling bursts of intuition. "Sister Martha has a printed card on the wall in the children's dining-room, and I've got to learn all the poetry on it because I need it worse than any of the others:-- "What we deem good order, we're willing to state, Eat hearty and decent, and clear out your plate; Be thankful to heaven for what we receive, And not make a mixture or compound to leave.