t-load of supplies was sent up from Mr. Mitford's stores. These
consisted of flour, sugar, tea, molasses, and bacon, together with half
a sheep. It was arranged that while the building was going on Wilfrid
and the two Grimstones should occupy the bed-room, and that the natives
should sleep in the kitchen. The Grimstones had brought with them the
bedding and blankets with which they had provided themselves on board
ship, while Wilfrid took possession of the bed formerly occupied by the
young settler. Mr. Mitford himself came over next morning and gave
general instructions as to the best way of setting about the building of
the house. He had already advised that it should be of the class known
as log-huts.

"They are much cooler," he said, "in the heat of summer than frame-huts,
and have the advantage that in the very improbable event of troubles
with the natives they are much more defensible. If you like, afterwards,
you can easily face them outside and in with match-board and make them
as snug as you like; but, to begin with, I should certainly say build
with logs. My boy will tell you which trees you had better cut down for
the work. It will take you a week to fell, lop, and roughly square them,
and this day week I will send over a team of bullocks with a native to
drag them up to the spot."

The work was begun at once. Half a dozen axes, some adzes, and other
tools had been brought up with the supplies from the stores, and the
work of felling commenced.

Wilfrid would not have any trees touched near the hut.

"There are just enough trees about here," he said, "and it would be an
awful pity to cut them down merely to save a little labour in hauling.
It will not make any great difference whether we have the team for a
week or a fortnight."

Wilfrid and the two young Englishmen found chopping very hard work at
first, and were perfectly astounded at the rapidity with which the
Maoris brought the trees down, each of them felling some eight or ten
before the new hands had managed to bring one to the ground.

"I would not have believed it if I had not seen it," Bob, the elder of
the two brothers, exclaimed as he stood breathless with the perspiration
streaming from his forehead, "that these black chaps could have beaten
Englishmen like that! Half a dozen strokes and down topples the tree,
while I goes chop, chop, chop, and don't seem to get any nearer to it."

"It will come in time," Wilfrid said. "I suppose there is