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But, by various means, they had learned just where the nuts grew most plentifully that season; and quite a list of available places had been tabulated: to the Guernsey Woods for blacks; plenty of shagbarks, and some shellbarks to be gathered over at the old Morton Place, where no one had lived these seven years now; and they said the chestnuts away up in that region miles beyond the mill-pond was bearing a record crop this season, as if to make amends for lean years a-plenty.
"Well, 'Kitty Keehoty, wild horses wouldn't have drug it out of me to anybody else; but I don't mind lettin' on to you, just you, that I'd admire to be one. I'd like it real well. But, that's nuther here nor there. Likin' things an' havin' 'em is as different as chalk an' cheese. An' here we be to the woods. The best chestnut-trees is yender, the best shellbarks t'other way.
One of the commonest nut trees, and certainly one of the most pleasing, is the hickory. There are hickories and hickories, and some are shellbarks, while others are bitternuts or pignuts.
I didn't lose my share of the shellbarks, for Ned went down early the next morning and got them, but I did lose the chestnut club, and what was worse, in spite of my sore back, I spent a very unpleasant quarter of an hour out in the woodshed, just two days later, and Ned, I am happy to say, passed through the same edifying experience.
He was a frequent buyer of fruit of all kinds and of melons. He was very fond of nuts, buying hazelnuts and shellbarks by the barrel, and he wrote his overseer in 1792 to "tell house Frank I expect he will lay up a more plenteous store of the black common walnuts than he usually does."
We heaped the shellbarks in great piles, ready to stow away in Ned's big wheat bag; and, when the ground was cleaned up pretty well, and the leaves had been thoroughly raked, we turned our attention to a close cluster of trees that stood close by the creek. These nuts were unusually large, and thin-shelled.
Thence Captain Gooding and a part of the crew were brought by the steamer Australia to San Francisco, from which point the captain made his way to his home in Yarmouth, where his family and friends welcomed him back as one risen from the dead, for they had long given up hope of ever seeing him again. "Say, Jack, the shellbarks are droppin' thick down in Big Woods.
But this, I thought, was an exceptional case, I badly wanted a bushel or two of shellbarks, and I knew full well that, unless they were gathered that afternoon, they wouldn't be gathered at all; for bright and early the next morning all the boys in the neighborhood would be down in Big Woods, armed with clubs and baskets and sacks, and even the squirrels would stand a poor show after that invasion.
What a chance for a fellow to lay up a bushel or two before the crowd gets down there in the morning." "Wouldn't it, though, Ned!" I replied wistfully, for if there was anything I had a fondness for, it was shellbarks.
"Pretty little Fido," said Kitty, taking the soft, curly creature in her arms; "I think it's the best present in the world, and to-morrow is to be real Christmas, because you are home, papa." "And we'll eat the turkey," said Harry, "and shellbarks, lots of them, that I saved for you. What a good time we'll have!
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