in carrying to the rubbish pile such limbs
and branches as her strength would permit her to handle.

Nothing could have been more charming than the immense efforts that she
put forth with such grace, to lift with all her might some branch that
her lover had tossed aside with a single hand! The attitudes into which
these efforts threw her body were as graceful as those into which the
water threw the cresses by its ceaseless flow, or the wind bent the tree
tops by its fitful gusts.

Steven was frantic with delight at the free, open life of the woods. He
chased the squirrels and rabbits, he climbed the trees to gaze into the
nests of the birds, and caught the butterflies in his hat.

David entered into all their pleasures, but with a chastened and
restrained delight, for he could never forget that he was an exile and a
penitent.

There were two days in the season when the regular routine of the
woodsman's work was interrupted by functions which possess a romantic
charm. One was when the Friends and neighbors from a wide region
assembled to help him "raise" the walls of his cabin.

From all sides they appeared, in their picturesque costumes of homespun
or fur. Suddenly, through the ever-open gates of the forest, teams of
horses crashed, drawing after them clanking log chains, and driven by
men who carried saws and "cant hooks" on their broad shoulders. Loud
halloos of greeting, cheerful words of encouragement, an eager and
agreeable bustle of business, filled the clearing.

Log by log the walls rose, as the horses rolled them into place with the
aid of the great chains which the pioneers wrapped around them. It was
only a rude log cabin they built--with a great, wide opening through the
middle, a room on either side, and a picturesque chimney at either end;
but it was not to be despised even for grace, and when warmth and
comfort and adaptability to needs and opportunities are considered,
there have been few buildings erected by the genius of man more justly
entitled to admiration.

When this single day's work was ended there remained nothing for David
to do but chink and daub the walls with mud, cover the rude rafters of
the roof with his shakes, build the chimneys out of short sticks,
cob-house fashion, and cement them on the inside with clay to protect
them from the flames.

The other day was the one on which, at the close of the long and genial
summer, when the mass of timber and brushwood had been thoroughly