ding all the water
without spilling a drop until the receiving trough was reached. This
trough was fastened high enough to strike the bottom of the pails as
they went by, tipping them over and emptying them of their contents.
From the trough the water ran directly into a large cider barrel and
from here was carried through a pipe to Mr. Halliday's barn. A stopcock
was here provided so that he could turn the water on or off, as he
desired. The use of pails was a great improvement on tin can buckets.
Fully three times as much water was poured into the receiving trough,
because not a drop was spilled out on the way up.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE LOG CABIN.

Immediately after fitting out Jim Halliday with his water wheel we set
to work on our log cabin. As a model we had a photograph of a log hut
which Uncle Ed had sent us. As the cabin was designed particularly for
use in winter time, we decided that it should be located where it would
be sheltered from the northern winds and would be exposed to the sun.
The ideal spot seemed to be on the southern shore of Kite Island, which
was backed by a thick grove of trees but gave an unobstructed view in
front for a distance of about four miles down-stream.

FOUNDATION OF LOG CABIN.

First we staked out the plan of the house. It was to be 12 feet long by
10 feet wide, so we leveled off a space of this area, and at the
corners, where the greatest weight of the building would come, large
rocks were embedded in the ground.

A LOGGING EXPEDITION.

The logs for the house were cut from a tract of wooded land about five
miles up the river, belonging to Mr. Schreiner. To be sure we could have
cut the timber from our own island, but when Reddy had said something to
his father about our building a log cabin, Mr. Schreiner had warned us
not to cut down any of the trees without the owner's permission. All we
could learn about the owner was that his name was Smith, and that he
lived somewhere in New York city. It seemed unlikely that he would ever
have anything to say about our cutting down a few trees, but rather than
run any risk Mr. Schreiner advised us to make use of his woods for any
timber we might need. Accordingly we started out early one morning on a
logging expedition. We had no apparatus for handling any logs more than
6 or 8 inches in diameter, and Bill reckoned it out that we would have
to have about fifty logs of this size for the sides of the building
alone. This did