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Cut off the head and most part of the neck; cut off the pinions and pull out the tail feathers, make a plastic cake of clay or tenacious earth an inch thick and large enough to envelop the bird and cover him with it snugly. Dig an oval pit under the fore-stick, large enough to hold him, and fill it with hot coals, keeping up a strong heat.
She knew that Graeme's words and movement were an invitation to tell her thoughts, so she bent forward to collect the scattered brands and settle the fore-stick, for she felt that her thoughts were not of the kind to bear telling to Graeme or to any one. As she gathered them together between the andirons, she sighed a sigh of mingled sorrow and impatience.
And there are old leather portmanteaus, like stranded porpoises, their mouths gaping in gaunt hunger for the food with which they used to be gorged to bulging repletion; and old brass andirons, waiting until time shall revenge them on their paltry substitutes, and they shall have their own again, and bring with them the fore-stick and the back-log of ancient days; and the empty churn, with its idle dasher, which the Nancys and Phoebes, who have left their comfortable places to the Bridgets and Norahs, used to handle to good purpose; and the brown, shaky old spinning-wheel, which was running, it may be, in the days when they were hinging the Salem witches.
He said they were wood instead of iron, to be sure, but he could afford to have a new pair whenever he wanted them. When he brought in a large fore-stick, and laid it across his andirons, he had the foundation for a fire, for twenty-four hours. On the crane hung two or three hooks, and on these, over the fire, mother did most of her cooking.
These were the back-logs, and they would last two or three days, buried in the ashes, breaking at last into a mass of splendid coals. In New England one builds a fire scientifically, if he expects to keep warm by it. There must be a fore-stick and a back-stick, and a pyramid of other sticks, with proper draught below and flame outlets above. And he must not spare fuel not if he expects heat.
It was the memory of the great open kitchen-fire, with its back-log and fore-stick of cord-wood, its roaring, hilarious voice of invitation, its dancing tongues of flame, that called to them through the snows of that dreadful winter to keep up their courage, that made their hearts warm and bright with a thousand reflected memories.
Them duck I shot won't be bad. You see, I've been expectin' you along rather; and he flung down an armful of wood, which he began to arrange with architectural reference to the back-log and fore-stick. 'Expecting us? exclaimed Robert Wynn. 'You're for lot fifteen in ninth concession, township of Gazelle?
The flatteries she had received from time to time were like the chips and splinters under the green wood, when the chill women pretended to make a fire in the best parlor at The Poplars, which had a way of burning themselves out, hardly warming, much less kindling, the fore-stick and the back-log.
So now, Barty Burt," he continued, going up to the other, who stood by the fire, kicking the fore-stick with his usual air of indifference; "come forward, and tell the meeting all you have der seen and heard, in the ditter camp of the Philistines."
"My hopes of escaping began to go down, for there I was, still chained to the fore-stick like a cow put out to grass. I looked around me in desperation, for I wanted to leave you some sign at least of my whereabouts. Then my eye fell on a little heap of small arms that had been thrown down near the forehatch.
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