ty in retracing their path than they had
formerly, a there were some striking peculiarities to mark it, and
they had learned to be very minute in the remarks they made as they
travelled, so that they now seldom missed the way they came by. A few
days after this, they removed all their household stores, viz. the axe,
the tin pot, bows and arrows, baskets, and bags of dried fruit, the
dried venison and fish, and the deerskin; nor did they forget the deer
scalp, which they bore away as a trophy, to be fastened up over the door
of their new dwelling, for a memorial of their first hunt on the shores
of the Rice Lake. The skin was given to Catharine to sleep on.

The boys were now busy from morning till night chopping down trees for
house-logs. It was a work of time and labour, as the axe was blunt, and
the oaks hard to cut; but they laboured on without grumbling, and Kate
watched the fall of each tree with lively joy. They were no longer dull;
there was something to look forward to from day to day-they were going
to commence housekeeping in good earnest and they should be warm and
well lodged before the bitter frosts of winter could come to chill their
blood. It was a joyful day when the log walls of the little shanty were
put up, and the door hewed out. Windows they had none, so they did
not cut out the spaces for them; _[FN: Many a shanty is put up in
Canada without windows, and only an open space for a door, with a rude
plank set up to close it in at night.]_ they could do very well without,
as hundreds of Irish and Highland emigrants have done before and since.

A pile of stones rudely cemented together with wet clay and ashes
against the logs, and a hole cut in the roof, formed the chimney
and hearth in this primitive dwelling. The chinks were filled with
wedge-shaped pieces of wood, and plastered with clay: the trees,
being chiefly oaks and pines, afforded no moss. This deficiency rather
surprised the boys, for in the thick forest and close cedar swamps, moss
grows in abundance on the north side of the trees, especially on the
cedar, maple, beech, bass, and iron wood; but there were few of these,
excepting a chance one or two in the little basin in front of the house.
The roof was next put on, which consisted of split cedars; and when the
little dwelling was thus far habitable, they were all very happy. While
the boys had been putting on the roof, Catharine had collected the
stones for the chimney, and cleared the eart