The hens, of course, must be sacrificed, all but a dozen of them; for, as there was no fresh meat for them in winter, they wouldn’t lay, and would be only a dead weight, she said to herself, as, with her apron thrown over her neck, she stood watching them, finger on lip.  However, that would give them poultry all through the holidays.  Then there were the pigs to be killed on halves by a neighbor, as almost everything else out-doors had now to be done; and when that was accomplished, she found no time to call her soul her own while making her sausage and bacon and souse and brawn.  Part of the pork would produce salt fish, without which what farm-house would stand?—­and with old hucklebones, her potatoes and parsnips, those ruby beets and golden carrots, there was many a Julien soup to be had.  Jones’s-root, bruised and boiled, made a chocolate as good as Spanish.  Instead of ginger, there were the wild caraway-seeds growing round the house.  If she could only contrive some sugar and some vanilla-beans, she would be well satisfied to open her campaign.  But as there had been for weeks only one single copper cent and two postage-stamps in the house, that seemed an impossibility.  Hereupon an idea seized little Jane, and for several days she was busy in a mysterious rummage.  Garrets and closets surrendered their hoards to her; files of old newspapers, old ledgers, old letter-backs, began to accumulate in heaps,—­everything but books, for Jane had a religious respect for their recondite lore; she cut the margins off the magazines, and she grew miserly of the very shreds ravelling under Vivia’s fingers.  At length, one morning, after she had watched the windows unweariedly as a cat watches a mouse-hole, she hurriedly exclaimed,—­

“There he is!”

“Who” asked Mrs. Vennard as hurriedly, with a dim idea that people in their State received visits from the sheriff.

“Our treasurer!” said little Jane.

And, indeed, the red cart crowned with yellow brooms and dazzling tin, the delight of housewives in lone places, was winding along the road; and in a few moments little Jane accosted its driver, standing victorious in the midst of her bags and bundles and baskets.

“How much were white rags?”

“Twelve cents.”

Laconic, through the urgencies of tobacco.

“What?”

“Twelve cents.”

“And colored?”

“Wal, they were consider’ble.”

“And paper?”

“Six cents.  ’T used to be half a cent Six cents now.”

“But the reason?” breathlessly.

“Reckoned ’twas the war’s much as anything.”

One good thing out of Nazareth!  Little Jane saw herself on the road to riches, and immediately had thoughts of selling the whole household-equipment for rags.  She displayed her commodities.

“Did he pay in money?”

“Didn’t like to; but then he did.”

“Fine day, to-day.”

“Wal, ’twas.”