"It's half-past nine now," he went on, looking at the clock. "It'll be
eleven time we get the stuff loaded and hauled up there. Let's go out
and get at it. Lucky the bobs are on the wagon; they don't make such a
racket as wheels."
He took the lantern from its nail behind the door and lighted it, after
which he put on his boots, cap, and mittens, and flung his overcoat
across his shoulders. Nels, meanwhile, had put on his outer garments,
also.
"Shut up the stove, Nels." Charlie blew out the light and opened the
door. "There, hang it!" he exclaimed, turning back. "I forgot the note.
Ought to be in ink, I suppose. Well, never mind now; we won't put on
any style about it."
He took down a pencil from the shelf, and, extracting a bit of wrapping
paper from a bundle behind the woodbox, wrote the note by the light of
the lantern.
"There, I guess that will do," he said, finally. "Come on!"
Outside, the night air was cold and bracing, and in the black vault of
the sky the winter constellations flashed and throbbed. The shadows of
the two men, thrown by the lantern, bobbed huge and grotesque across
the snow and among the bare branches of the cottonwoods, as they moved
toward the barn.
"Ay tank ve put on dose extra side poards and make her an even fifty
pushel," said Nels, after they had backed the wagon up to the granary
door.
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