l, which, in a
shanty, is always higher than the back, making a fall to the roof. Mr.
Holt managed to keep the Yankee so closely employed during the next
hour, that he took out of him the work of two, and utterly quenched his
loquacity for the time being. 'He shall earn his dinner, at all events,'
quoth Sam to himself.

'Wal, stranger, you _are_ a close shave,' said Zack, sitting down
to rest, and fanning himself with a dirty brownish rag by way of
handkerchief. 'I hain't worked so hard at any "bee" this twelve month.
You warn't born last week, I guess.'

'I reckon not,' replied Sam, receiving the compliment as conscious
merit should. 'But we're not half done, Mr. Bunting; and I'd like such
a knowledgeable head as yours to help fix the troughs.'

'Oil for oil in this world,' thought Robert.

'Throth, they'll build me up entirely,' said Andy to himself; 'an' sorra
door to get out or in by, only four walls an' a hole in the middle of
the floor. Of all the quare houses that iver I see, this shanty bates
them hollow. Masther Robert,' calling aloud, 'I wondher have I dug deep
enough?'

'Come out here, and get dinner,' was the response. 'We'll see to-morrow.'

''Tis asier said than done,' remarked Andy, looking for a niche between
the logs to put his foot in. 'I hope this isn't the way we'll always
have to be clamberin' into our house; but sorra other way do I see,
barrin' the hole's to be a passage ondherground.'

'You goose! the hole is to be a cellar, wherein to keep potatoes and
pork,' said his master, overhearing the tale of his soliloquy. Andy
departed to his cookery enlightened.

Before the pan had done frizzling, whole rows of the ready-made troughs
were laid along the roof, sloping from the upper wall plate to the back;
and Mr. Bunting had even begun to place the covering troughs with either
edge of the hollow curving into the centre of that underneath. Robert
and Arthur were chinking the walls by driving pieces of wood into every
crevice between the logs: moss and clay for a further stuffing must be
afterwards found.

If the Yankee were quick at work, he fulfilled the other sequent of the
adage likewise. His dinner was almost a sleight-of-hand performance.
Arthur could hardly eat his own for concealed amusement at the gulf-like
capacity of his mouth, and the astonishing rapidity with which the
eatables vanished.

'While you'd be sayin' "thrapstick," he tucked in a quarter of a stone
of praties and a cou