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Bang! went the right-hand barrel; and bang! went the left-hand barrel. Such scampering, such leaping off the shed, such running away over the eaves of the outbuildings, over the tops of the wood-sheds, were never seen before. The echoes of the firing had scarcely died away, when that whole assemblage was broken up and dispersed.

Not many of the boys really had to saw wood, though a good many of the fellows' fathers had saws and bucks in their wood-sheds. There were public sawyers who did most of the wood-sawing; and they came up with their bucks on their shoulders, and asked for the job almost as soon as the wood was unloaded before your door.

But as we rushed round that forenoon, it occurred to Addison to hire a horse-power and circular saw that was owned by a man named Morefield, who lived near the wood-sheds of the railway-station, six miles from the old Squire's. It was a rig used for sawing wood for the locomotives.

Clients are rare so near the outskirts of the town. He used to remain long hours in the studio, talking in a very low voice, reading at his friend's side, listening to the rain on the window-panes or the wind that blew as it does on the open sea, shaking the old doors and the window-sashes below in the wood-sheds.

Rough, unpainted wooden fences separated them one from another; rough cow-sheds, coal-sheds, or wood-sheds were braced up against the fences, and back of all the yards along the row ran a high rickety barrier of boards, as rough and unprepossessing as the others.

Some men run faithfully to fires year after year and view a fine collection of burning beefsteaks and feverish chimneys and volcanic wood-sheds, while others stroll out after dinner in a strange city and spend a pleasant evening watching a burning oil-refinery make a Vesuvius look pale and sickly in comparison. Luck is distributed in a dastardly way, and as for myself I've quit trying.

Lucina, passing the Prescott house from the rear, instead of the front, seeing the unpainted walls and roof-slopes of barn and wood-sheds, and the garden, had a curious sense of retroversion in material things which suited well her mind. She felt that day as if she were turned backward to her own self. The fields were divided from one another by stone walls.

Days rolled on while all this was being done, the wood chopped and heaped away in the wood-sheds and under the back portico; the church and house made as green as spring-tide with their abundant decorations, tastefully arranged in wreaths and folds and circles, with the great green "Merrie Christmas" welcoming all comers from over the high parlor mantel.

Decidedly, the place was what the country people call sightly. The old house, once painted a Brandon red, crouched low to the ground, with its lean-to in the rear, and its flat-arched wood-sheds and wagon-houses stretching away at the side of the barn, and covering the approach to it with an unbroken roof.

Turning at the foot of the stairs, he strode to the rear door, and looked out through the side-light upon the unpicturesqueness of the yards, the coal- and wood-sheds, the rough, unpainted board fences; the dismantled gate, propped in most inebriate style against its bark-covered post, and clinging thereto with but a single hinge.