The next trolley that passed the old barn after the Hollisters had left brought a maid servant and a man servant from the Graham place. The other old servant met them, and together the three went to work. They had brought with them a lot of large dust-covers and floor-spreads such as are used by housemaids in cleaning a room, and with these they now proceeded to cover all the large pieces of furniture in the place. In a very short space of time the rugs and bits of carpet were carefully rolled up, the furniture piled in small compass in the middle of the rooms, and everything enveloped in thick coverings. The curtains, bric-â-brac, and even the dishes were put away carefully, and the whole big, inviting home was suddenly denuded. The clothes from the calico-curtained clothes-presses were folded and laid in drawers, and everything made perfectly safe for a lot of workmen to come into the house. Even the hay-loft bedrooms shared in this process. Only a cot was left for the old servant and a few necessary things for him to use, and most of these he transported to the basement out of the way. When the work was done the man and maid took the trolley back home again and the other old man servant arranged to make his Sabbath as pleasant as possible in the company of his brother from the near-by farm.
Monday morning promptly at eight o'clock the trolley landed a bevy of workmen, carpenters, plasterers, plumbers, and furnace men, with a foreman who set them all at work as if it were a puzzle he had studied out and memorized the solution. In a short time the quiet spot was full of sound, the symphony of industry, the rhythm of toil. Some men were working away with the furnace that had been stored in the cellar; others were measuring, fitting, cutting holes for lead pipes; still others were sawing away at the roof, making great gashes in its mossy extent; and two men were busy taking down the old barn door. Out in front more men were building a vat for mortar, and opening bags of lime and sand that began to arrive. Three men with curious aprons made of ticking, filled with thin wire nails, were frantically putting laths on the uprights that the carpenters had already set up, and stabbing them with nails from a seemingly inexhaustible supply in their mouths. It was as if they had all engaged to build the tower of Babel in a day, and meant to win a prize at it. Such sounds! Such shoutings, such bangings, thumpings, and harsh, raucous noises! The bird in the tall tree looked and shivered, thankful that her brood were well away on their wings before all this cataclysm came to pass.