The first week of March, all the people were busy making maple sugar.  “Did you ever taste any maple sugar, ma’am?” asked Monaghan, as he sat feeding Katie one evening by the fire.

“No, John.”

“Well, then, you’ve a thrate to come; and it’s myself that will make Miss Katie, the darlint, an illigant lump of that same.”

Early in the morning John was up, hard at work, making troughs for the sap.  By noon he had completed a dozen, which he showed me with great pride of heart.  I felt a little curious about this far-famed maple sugar, and asked a thousand questions about the use to which the troughs were to be applied; how the trees were to be tapped, the sugar made, and if it were really good when made?

To all my queries, John responded, “Och! ’tis illigant.  It bates all the sugar that ever was made in Jamaky.  But you’ll see before to-morrow night.”

Moodie was away at P—–­, and the prospect of the maple sugar relieved the dulness occasioned by his absence.  I reckoned on showing him a piece of sugar of our own making when he came home, and never dreamt of the possibility of disappointment.

John tapped his trees after the most approved fashion, and set his troughts to catch the sap; but Miss Amanda and Master Ammon upset them as fast as they filled, and spilt all the sap.  With great difficulty, Monaghan saved the contents of one large iron pot.  This he brought in about nightfall, and made up a roaring fire, in order to boil in down into sugar.  Hour after hour passed away, and the sugar-maker looked as hot and black as the stoker in a steam-boat.  Many times I peeped into the large pot, but the sap never seemed to diminish.

“This is a tedious piece of business,” thought I, but seeing the lad so anxious, I said nothing.  About twelve o’clock he asked me, very mysteriously, for a piece of pork to hang over the sugar.

“Pork!” said I, looking into the pot, which was half full of a very black-looking liquid; “what do you want with pork?”

“Shure an’ ’tis to keep the sugar from burning.”

“But, John, I see no sugar!”

“Och, but ’tis all sugar, only ’tis molasses jist now.  See how it sticks to the ladle.  Aha!  But Miss Katie will have the fine lumps of sugar when she awakes in the morning.”

I grew so tired and sleepy that I left John to finish his job, went to bed, and soon forgot all about the maple sugar.  At breakfast I observed a small plate upon the table, placed in a very conspicuous manner on the tea-tray, the bottom covered with a hard, black substance, which very much resembled pitch.  “What is that dirty-looking stuff, John?”

“Shure an ’tis the maple sugar.”

“Can people eat that?”

“By dad, an’ they can; only thry it, ma’arm.”

“Why, ’tis so hard, I cannot cut it.”

With some difficulty, and not without cutting his finger, John broke a piece off, and stuffed it into the baby’s mouth.  The poor child made a horrible face, and rejected it as if it had been poison.  For my own part, I never tasted anything more nauseous.  It tasted like a compound of pork grease and tobacco juice.  “Well, Monaghan, if this be maple sugar, I never wish to taste any again.”