He is a tall and sturdy lad, with face somewhat freckled and hair somewhat bleached by constant exposure to sunshine, or whatever other kind of weather the Lord chooses to send.

He wears a jacket and trousers of coarse, strong woollen cloth of the color known as "pepper and salt," and even this simple suit of clothes would be a fit subject for a collector of curiosities in our own day. Only a week ago the wool of which it was made was on the sheep's backs.

"Jonathan must have a new suit of clothes," his mother had said, as she carefully set a round patch into the middle of the big square one that she had inserted into his trousers a month or two ago.

"I can make the clothes now, if I have the wool; but next week come the soap-making and the quilting, and there will not be much time to spare."

"Then I will shear for you to-morrow," said her husband, and, true to his word, he brought her in a black fleece and a white one, and the wool was soon carded, and the spinning wheels in motion.

Thankful, the oldest daughter, was a good spinner, and their neighbor, Mrs. Deliverance Putnam, coming in the next day, began also to spin with the big wheel, while she told her news; so it was not long before the heavy skeins of black and white yarn were ready for the loom.

Mother herself is the best weaver; so Thankful and Betty did the churning and cooking and sweeping and mending, while she "set up" a good piece of mixed black and white cloth (pepper and salt), as I said before.

Then Miss Polly Emerson, the tailoress, came to cut out the clothes, and busy hands (not sewing-machines, for who ever dreamed of a sewing-machine in those days?) soon stitched them together, and there was Jonathan's new suit, homespun, home-woven, home-made.

We may have some idea of what a suit of clothes is worth when we understand how all this work has been needed for the making of it. And now we are ready to charge Jonathan not to use his new clothes carelessly. He isn't to wear them every day, of course; his old ones will still last some months with careful patching. But to-day is Sunday and he has been to meeting, and sat on the pulpit stairs through a sermon two hours long by the hour-glass, in the forenoon, and another scarcely shorter in the afternoon, relieved a little, however, by the singing from the old Bay Psalm-book in which the whole congregation joined.

Now, since the sun has set, and the needful household chores are done, he may read Pilgrim's Progress by the firelight.

At noontime he had eaten his dinner of bread and cheese on Meeting-house Green, where he talked with Reuben Thompson and Abner Dwight, who had come with their parents to meeting, riding by a bridle-path through the woods. Jonathan stood on the meeting-house steps to watch them ride away when the afternoon services had ended. Farmer Dwight, on his brown horse, with his good wife behind him on a pillion, and Goodman Thompson, on his old gray, which also carried double, for Goodwife Thompson sat smiling behind her husband, as easy and comfortable as if in her own chair at home.

The two boys rode together on old Dobbin, and urged him along as best they could, lest they should not get through Price's woods before dark, for it wasn't unusual to meet a prowling wolf by the way after nightfall.

Then Jonathan had trudged home, two miles over a rough road, and was ending his day beside the fire, with his book, as I told you in the beginning of the chapter.

He had just got as far as Giant Despair and Doubting Castle, when his little sister Patty, sitting on a low stool before the fire, with her kitten in her lap, called to him to look quickly, and see the wild geese go up the chimney, and there, on the sooty back of the great, wide fireplace, the sparks had caught for a moment like a flock of birds, quickly moving up the chimney, as one died out and a fresh one caught fire.

The children always liked to watch them, and this time Stephen Stackpole, their father's hired man, stopped for an instant to watch them too, while he laid a fresh armful of wood beside the fire.

"Them ain't wild geese, children," he said, "Them's the folks goin' to meetin'. Don't ye see, there's the parson in front, and all the folks flockin' on behind. That's what we used to call 'em when I was a boy."

Sunday evenings were short in those days, and Monday morning found our boy up at day-break, and dressed in his patched clothes. He is busy about his morning work, for he has to help about the milking, drive the cows and sheep to pasture, draw water from the well with a bucket hung from a long pole called the well-sweep, and then carry the hams up to the little smoke-room that is built into the chimney, and reached through a door which opens from the attic; for the best of bacon was smoked in every household chimney in those days.

While he is working, we will take a look at his home,—a strange, one-sided-looking house, with a "lean-to" at the back or north side, where there is a cool buttery, or pantry, which saves Goodwife Dawson many a trip down cellar or out to the well. For the well is used as a sort of refrigerator, and many a pail of butter is kept cool and sweet in its depths.

The cellar has a big trap-door outside the house, and ladder-like steps to go down, and when this door is closed it makes a comfortable seat where, on a summer afternoon, you might see little Patty Dawson sitting with her knitting-work; for, the minute the child sat down, her mother would put her knitting-work into her hands, saying, "You can rest just as well knitting." And the consequence was that the little eight-year old girl has already become an expert knitter, and has not only knitted a pair of stockings for herself, but also a big stout pair, of blue yarn, for her brother.

The cellar had bins for potatoes and turnips and other vegetables, and many an hour has Jonathan worked there, storing away the winter stock of food.

"That is just what the farmers do everywhere, now as well as then," you will say.

That is true of the farmers, but in Jonathan's time this storing of provisions for the winter was necessary for every man, for provision-stores were few and far between, and almost every man had land enough to raise all that was needed for his own family.

When the cellar-door was closed, you could stand upon it and look in at the east window of the kitchen. It was a window of twenty-four small panes of coarse, greenish glass, set in heavy sashes, but through it you could look into the pleasantest room in the house.

It extended the whole way across the back part of the house, and had one east window and two west ones, and the sun lay across the floor, one way or the other, all day long. On the north side was the great brick fireplace, with a stone hearth that measured ten feet by seven.

In the afternoon, when the work was done, the kitchen floor was sprinkled with sand, which was swept into graceful curves, like a prettily marked-out pattern. Thankful always took her finest birch broom for this sweeping, and prided herself upon her kitchen floor as much as Minnie and Alice do now upon their piano-playing and embroidery.

The kitchen fire was a pleasant sight. It not only roasted the meat, and boiled the kettle and the pots that hung from the hooks of the crane, it also filled the kitchen with a glow of light and heat, and shone upon the pewter plates and dishes on the dresser, and the polished brasses of the great chest of drawers that stood opposite the fireplace.

Under the doors and around the windows winter winds blew in, and snow drifted into little piles on the sills, and grandfather had to sit in the warmest corner, where the high back of the settle protected him from drafts.

Over the fireplace were curious little cupboards in the wall, so high up that the children could not reach them; but perhaps the treasures they contained were all the safer for that.