opened and the ploughs all over the countryside were starting, their
one chance to cultivate a crop was to hire a mule from their nearest
neighbor, the tanner. Birt was the eldest son, and his mother had
only his work to offer in payment. The proposition always took the
tanner in what he called a "jubious time." Spring is the season for
stripping the trees of their bark, which is richer in tannin when
the sap flows most freely, and the mule was needed to haul up the
piles of bark from out the depths of the woods to the tanyard.
Then, too, Jubal Perkins had his own crops to put in. As he often
remarked in the course of the negotiation, "I don't eat tan bark--
nor yit raw hides." Although the mule was a multifarious animal,
and ploughed and worked in the bark-mill, and hauled from the woods,
and went long journeys in the wagon or under the saddle, he was not
ubiquitous, and it was impossible for him to be in the several
places in which he was urgently needed at the same time. Therefore,
to hire him out on these terms seemed hardly an advantage to his
master. Nevertheless, this bargain was annually struck. The
poverty-stricken widow always congratulated herself upon its
conclusion, and it never occurred to her that the amount of work
that Birt did in the tanyard was a disproportionately large return
for the few days that the tanner's mule ploughed their little
fields.

Birt, however, was beginning to see that a boy to drive that mule
around the bark-mill was as essential as the mule himself. As
Providence had failed to furnish the tanner with a son for this
purpose--his family consisting of several small daughters--Birt
supplied a long-felt want.

The boy appreciated that his simple mother was over-reached, yet he