he home of the father
and mother whose figures were often before his mind's eye. With hands
still tender, he went on felling trees, selecting the smaller, and when
he had got a heap together he set fire, for he needed a clearance in
which he wanted to plant potatoes. On Saturday coming he left for
Magarth's, for he had promised to post up his accounts of the week. On
finishing all Magarth had to do, Archie wrote his mother. When he landed
at Montreal he had sent a letter to his father telling of the voyage and
his safe arrival. Now he had to send them word of his having got a lot
and that he had made a start in clearing it. Sunday the little hamlet
was deserted. The hired men had gone to visit friends and had taken
Magarth's boys with them. 'Tis the only outing they get,' explained
Magarth, who was surprised on Archie's preparing to return to his
shanty, for he expected he would stay till evening. Not wishing to be
beholden too much to his kind friend, he shouldered what supplies he had
bought the night before and started. Among the supplies was a hoe and a
bag of potatoes to plant amid the stumps.

The routine of his daily life was monotonous--up with the sun to attack
the trees which stood between him and a livelihood. It was lonely but he
never grew despondent. Singing, whistling, shouting, he kept at his
work. Two of the songs of Burns were his favorites--a Man's a Man for a'
that and Scots wha hae. On coming to the line, Liberty with every blow,
he drove his ax into the tree with vim, and, indeed, the trees at that
time were the enemies he had to fight. Saturdays he went to Magarth's to
do what writing he might have, for his daughter was in no hurry to leave
Toronto. Each Monday found Archie more handy with the ax, and neither
heat nor mosquitoes caused him to slacken in extending his clearance.
Wet days alone made him take rest in his shanty, in a corner of which
was his bed of hemlock boughs and fern leaves. When summer waned and the
nights grew cold the lack of a chimney in his shanty made living in it
intolerable, for the smoke circulated round until it found the hole in
the roof intended for its escape. He thought over plans to get a
chimney, but could hit on none that he could carry out without some one
to help him. From time to time he had burnings of brush-heaps, storing
the ashes in a hole he had dug in the side of a hillock and covering
them with big sheets of bark to keep them dry. The end of September, o