noon
The frost of a little time before had been just sufficient to make them ready to pick , and the ground was already strewn with the half-opened burrs of many that had been shaken from the trees . Others still hung to the boughs by so slender and brittle a thread that it was only necessary to hurl clubs up into the trees to have them come down in showers . The boys had brought big bags along with them to carry the nuts they might gather , and before long these had most of the wrinkles spread out of them by the steadily accumulating collection of chestnuts that formed the bulk of their treasure , although they had a good many hickory nuts as well . The active work gave them all an appetite , a thing that came to them very easily under almost any circumstances , and a little before noon they ceased for a while from gathering the nuts and bestirred themselves in gathering leaves and brushwood for a fire . Their bags were more than half full , and from what they had seen they knew they would have little trouble in finishing filling them up to the very drawing strings . They gathered together a little cairn of rocks and built the fire inside of it , keeping it fed to such effect that before long the stones were at a white heat . Then they drew the fire away and on the heated stones roasted their potatoes and a large number of the chestnuts they had gathered .