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The mind of the prosperous farmer fell into a reminiscent mood and he spoke of little things concerning his life as a boy and young man; the days of cutting wood alone in the silent, white forest when winter came and it was time for getting out firewood and logs for new farm buildings, the log rollings to which neighboring farmers came, when great piles of logs were made and set afire that space might be cleared for planting.
If the Five Sisters lay low, what next!" And dismal shakings of the head and rollings of the eyes from all parties followed this proposition. "What next," echoed the sexton, Adam Frost, who on hearing his name brought into the argument, showed himself at once ready to respond to it.
He would come to us, with his hoe in his hand, and as we sat perched, like a row of swallows, on the rail of the fence, in the mellow twilight of a summer evening, he would tell us such fearful stories, accompanied by such awful rollings of his white eyes, that we were almost afraid of our own footsteps as we returned home afterwards in the dark.
Young ducks could hardly have a more evident hankering after the water. "And what do you want, Alice?" said Ernest. "Oh," she said, "I'm going to marry Jack here, and be a bargeman's wife." Jack was the eldest boy, now nearly twelve, a sturdy little fellow, the image of what Mr Rollings must have been at his age.
At log rollings and chopping bees, in the field or at the mill, or in any of the games in which the backwoodsman tries his strength, no one had ever successfully contested his place as the strongest man in the hills. And still, throughout the country side, the old folks tell with pride tales of the marvelous feats of strength performed in the days when "Old Matt" was young.
While he thus stood deliberating upon the prudence of this daring exploit, he heard a variety of noises, and knockings, and rollings, as if of empty barrels, and rattling of chains, all going on inside, whilst the house itself appeared to be dark and still, without smoke from the chimneys, or light in the windows, or any other symptom of being inhabited, unless by those who were producing the wild and extraordinary noises he then heard.
In his rollings Charlie came to the edge of the knoll where a thick but soft bush concealed a ledge, or drop, of about two feet. Through this bush he passed in a moment. Sally leaped up and sprang to the spot, just in time to see her charge rolling helplessly down the slope to what appeared to be certain death. There was but a short slope between the bush and the cliff.
The non-armoured victims, vulnerable by the sting over almost their whole body, ordinary caterpillars and Looper caterpillars, Cetonia- and Anoxia-larvae, whose only means of defence, apart from their mandibles, consists of rollings and contortions, called for the testimony of another victim, the Spider, almost as ill-protected, but armed with formidable poison-fangs.
The wit and broken English which the boy had learned among the captives of our nation, pleased me entirely: and, to add to his cheerfulness I gave him a dram of the bottle: we could get but little sleep all the night for those terrible howlings they made; and, indeed, we were both very much affrighted, when, by the rollings of the water, and other tokens, we justly concluded one of these monsters made towards our boat.
The bands of women and children at the harvestings, the log rollings, and the house raisings, were not there merely to lighten the men's work by their laughter and love-making.
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