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He and Father sat on -stools in the cold barnyard by the corn-shocks They pulled ears of corn from the stalks; they took the tips of the dry husks between thus, and stripped the husks off the ear of corn They tossed the bare ears into bushel baskets

The stalks and rustling long dry leaves they laid in piles The young stock would eat the leaves

When they had husked all the corn they could reach, they hitched their stools forward, and sloorked their way deeper into the tasseled shocks of corn Husks and stalks piled up behind them Father emptied the full baskets into the corn-bins, and the bins were filling up

It was not very cold in the barnyard The big barns broke the cold winds, and the dry snow shook off the cornstalks Alht of his new boots He could hardly wait till supper-time to see what the cobbler had done

That day the cobbler had whittled out tooden lasts, just the shape of Al on his bench, and they would come apart in halves

Nextthe cobbler cut soles from the thick middle of the cowhide, and inner soles froe He cut uppers from the softest leather Then he waxed his thread

With his right hand he pulled a length of linen thread across the wad of black cobbler’s wax in his left palht palm, down the front of his leather apron Then he pulled it and rolled it again The waxsound, and the cobbler’s arms went out and in, out and in, till the thread was shiny-black and stiff ax

Then he laid a stiff hog-bristle against each end of it, and he waxed and rolled, waxed and rolled, till the bristles axed fast to the thread At last he was ready to sew He laid the upper pieces of one boot together, and claes stuck up, even and firh theh the hole, one froht He bored another hole, ran the two bristles through it, and pulled till the waxed thread sank into the leather That was one stitch

“Now that’s a seaet da in them I never sewed a seam yet that wouldn’t hold water”

Stitch by stitch he sewed the uppers When they were done, he laid the soles to soak in water overnight

Next , the sole up He laid the leather inner-sole on it He drew the upper part of a boot down over it, folding the edges over the inner sole Then he laid the heavy sole on top, and there was the boot, upside-down on the last

The cobbler bored holes with his awl, all around the edge of the sole Into each hole he drove one of the short ed it in place with the long s The boot was done

The da the cobbler took out the lasts, and with a rasp he rubbed off the inside ends of the pegs

Almanzo put on his boots They fitted perfectly, and the heels thurandly on the kitchen floor

Saturdayhome Alice and Royal and Eliza Jane, to bedinner for theain