shed to complete his preparations. His tools enabled him to make
several benches inside and outside Will Tree. The stools were cut out
roughly with the axe, the table made a little less roughly became more
worthy of the dishes and dinner things with which Professor Tartlet
adorned it. The beds were arranged in wooden boxes and their litter of
dry grass assumed a more inviting aspect. If mattresses and palliasses
were still wanting, counterpanes at least were not. The various cooking
utensils stood no longer on the ground, but had their places on planks
fixed along the walls. Stores, linen, and clothes were carefully put
away in cavities hollowed out in the bark of the sequoia. From strong
pegs were suspended the arms and instruments, forming quite a trophy on
the walls.

Godfrey was also desirous of putting a door to the house, so that the
other living creatures--the domestic animals--should not come during the
night and trouble their sleep. As he could not cut out boards with his
only saw, the handsaw, he used large and thick pieces of bark, which he
got off very easily. With these he made a door sufficiently massive to
close the opening into Will Tree, at the same time he made two little
windows, one opposite to the other, so as to let light and air into the
room. Shutters allowed him to close them at night, but from the morning
to the evening it was no longer necessary to take refuge in flaring
resinous torches which filled the dwelling with smoke. What Godfrey
would think of to yield them light during the long nights of winter he
had as yet no idea. He might take to making candles with the mutton fat,
or he might be contented with resinous torches more carefully prepared.
We shall see.

Another of his anxieties was how to construct a chimney in Will Tree.
While the fine weather lasted, the fire outside among the roots of the
sequoia sufficed for all the wants of the kitchen, but when the bad
weather came and the rain fell in torrents, and they would have to
battle with the cold, whose extreme rigour during a certain time they
reasonably feared, they would have to have a fire inside their house,
and the smoke from it must have some vent. This important question
therefore had to be settled.

One very useful work which Godfrey undertook was to put both banks of
the river in communication with each other on the skirt of the
sequoia-trees.

He managed, after some difficulty, to drive a few stakes into the
river-bed,