There was Duncan, Ducie, Trube, Lill, Skibo, Sally, Prince, and one called William-le-Bon.
They reached us in October, but we were several weeks getting them paired in spans and ready to go up into the woods for the winter's work.
The first snow that fall caught us in the midst of "housing-time," but fine weather followed it, so that we were able to finish our farmwork and get ready for winter.
Housing-time! How many memories of late fall at the old farm cling to that word! It is one of those homely words that dictionary makers have overlooked, and refers to those two or three weeks when you are making everything snug at the farm for freezing weather and winter snow; when you bring the sheep and young cattle home from the pasture, do the last fall ploughing, and dig the last rows of potatoes; when you bank sawdust, dead leaves or boughs round the barns and the farmhouse; when you get firewood under cover, and screw on storm windows and hang storm doors.

It is a busy time in Maine, where you must prepare for a long winter and for twenty degrees below zero.
At last we were ready to start up to the logging camp with the sixteen horses.

We hitched three spans of them to a scoot that had wide, wooden shoes, and that was loaded high with bags of grain, harnesses, peavies, shovels, axes, and chains.

The other ten horses we led behind by halters.
Asa Doane, one of our hired men at the farm, drove the three spans on the scoot; Addison and I sat on the load behind and held the halters of the led horses.

We had often taken horses into the woods in that way, and expected to have no trouble this time; although these horses were young, they were not high-spirited or mettlesome.