hung that threatening sky. Do what he could for their comfort, it
must be insufficient in a rotting, windswept shelter like that. And
here came the pinch of conscience, the wrench of remorse: the small
sums of money which his father and mother had saved up at such a
sacrifice on the farm,--the money which he had spent lavishly on
himself in preparation, as he had supposed, for his high calling in
life,--if but a small part of that had been applied to the roof and
weather-boarding of the stable, the stock this night might have
been housed in warmth and safety.

The feeding and bedding attended to, with a basket of cobs in his
hand for his mother, he hurried away to the woodpile. This was in
the yard near the negro cabin and a hundred yards or more from the
house. There he began to cut and split the wood for the fires that
night and for next morning. Three lengths of this: first, for the
grate in his father's and mother's room--the best to be found among
the logs of the woodpile: good dry hickory for its ready blaze and
rousing heat; to be mixed with seasoned oak, lest it burn out too
quickly--an expensive wood; and perhaps also with some white ash
from a tree he had felled in the autumn. Then sundry back-logs and
knots of black walnut for the cabin of the two negro women (there
being no sense of the value of this wood in the land in those days,
nearly all of it going to the cabins, to the kitchens, to cord-
wood, or to the fences of the farm; while the stumps were often
grubbed up and burned on the spot). Then fuel of this same sort for
the kitchen stove. Next, two or three big armfuls of very short
sticks for the small grate in his own small room above stairs--a
little more than usual, with the idea that he might wish to sit up
late.