Down North and Up Along 
with full buckets. They were young men and 
girls who had been out on the mountains to 
the blueberry barrens which are famous about 
here. It seemed to be a sort of annual picnic 
which lasted two or three days, they coming at 
sunset to the Half Way House and at sunrise 
going forth to the mountains. 
They took supper at a long table in the 
kitchen, and we were sorry to see they did 
not fare as well as we, for they had only the 
never-failing tea and toast, rather an insufficient 
meal, one should think, after a long day on the 
mountains. But the bread at the Half Way 
House is at least not sour, and tea and toast is 
the fare to which they are accustomed, and 
which they would have had in their own homes 
no matter how hard the labour of the day. 
The berry-pickers talked Gaelic at table, 
and after tea the girls kept silent or whispered 
to one another, while the men smoked their 
pipes and talked to one another — always in 
Gaelic. As they sat ranged along the sides of 
the kitchen on benches and chairs, they strongly 
recalled the poor whites or " Crackers " of the 
far South. They had the same starved-looking 
bodies, and no doubt opposite severities of 
266 
