r of
sawed lumber to his cabin, he who was obliged to use puncheons was
better off than those with whom timber was so scarce that the natural
surface on the ground was their only floor.

"My! how it rattles!" was Sandy's remark when he had first taken a few
steps on the new puncheon floor of their cabin. "It sounds like a
tread-mill going its rounds. Can't you nail these down, daddy?"

His father explained that the unseasoned lumber of the puncheons would
so shrink in the drying that no fastening could hold them. They must
lie loosely on the floor-joists until they were thoroughly seasoned;
then they might be fastened down with wooden pins driven through holes
bored for that purpose; nails and spikes cost too much to be wasted on
a puncheon floor. In fact, very little hardware was wasted on any part
of that cabin. Even the door was made by fastening with wooden pegs a
number of short pieces of shakes to a frame fitted to the doorway cut
in the side of the cabin. The hinges were strong bits of leather, the
soles of the boots whose legs had been used for corn-droppers. The
clumsy wooden latch was hung inside to a wooden pin driven into one of
the crosspieces of the door, and it played in a loop of deerskin at
the other end. A string of deerskin fastened to the end of the
latch-bar nearest the jamb of the doorway was passed outside through a
hole cut in the door, serving to lift the latch from without when a
visitor would enter.

"Our latch-string hangs out!" exclaimed Charlie, triumphantly, when
this piece of work was done. "I must say I never knew before what it
meant to have the 'latch-string hanging out' for all comers. See,
Oscar, when we shut up the house for the night, all we have to do is
to pull in the latch-string, and the door is barred."

"Likewise, when you have dropped your jackknife through a crack in the
floor into the cellar beneath, all you have to do is to turn over a
puncheon or two and get down and find it," said Sandy, coolly, as he
took up two slabs and hunted for his knife. The boys soon found that
although their home was rude and not very elegant as to its furniture,
it had many conveniences that more elaborate and handsomer houses did
not have. There were no floors to wash, hardly to sweep. As their
surroundings were simple, their wants were few. It was a free and easy
life that they were gradually drifting into, here in the wilderness.

Charlie declared that the cabin ought to have a name. A