thing that is well done, is done with the least noise and
confusion. Set the stockades mair pairpendic'lar, my men."

"Ay--dress them, too, my lads"--added the venerable ex-serjeant.

"This is queer plantin', Jamie," put in Joel, "and queerer grain will
come of it. Do you think these young chestnuts will ever grow, ag'in,
that you put them out in rows, like so much corn?"

"Now it's no for the growth we does it, Joel, but to presairve the
human growth we have. To keep the savage bairbers o' the wilderness
fra' clippin' our polls before the shearin' time o' natur' has gathered
us a' in for the hairvest of etairnity. They that no like the safety
we're makin' for them, can gang their way to 'ither places, where they
'11 find no forts, or stockades to trouble their een."

"I'm not critical at all, Jamie, though to my notion a much better use
for your timber plantation would be to turn it into sheds for cattle,
in the winter months. I can see some good in _that_, but none in
_this_."

"Bad luck to ye, then, Misther Sthroddle," cried Mike, from the bottom
of the trench, where he was using a pounding instrument with the zeal
of a paviour--"Bad luck to the likes of ye, say I, Misther Strides. If
ye've no relish for a fortification, in a time of war, ye've only to
shoulther yer knapsack, and go out into the open counthry, where ye'll
have all to yer own satisfaction. Is it forthify the house, will we?
That we will, and not a hair of the missuss's head, nor of the young
ladies' heads, nor of the masther's head, though he's mighty bald as it
is, but not a hair of _all_ their heads shall be harmed, while
Jamie, and Mike, and the bould ould serjeant, here, can have their way.
I wish I had the trench full of yer savages, and a gineral funeral we'd
make of the vagabonds! Och! They're the divil's imps, I hear from all
sides, and no love do I owe them."

"And yet you're the bosom friend of Nick, who's anything but what I
call a specimen of his people."

"Is it Nick ye 're afther? Well, Nick's half-civilized accorthin' to
yer Yankee manners, and he's no spicimen, at all. Let him hear you call
him by sich a name, if ye want throuble."

Joel walked away, muttering, leaving the labourers in doubt whether he
relished least the work he was now obliged to unite in furthering, or
Mike's hit at his own peculiar people. Still the work proceeded, and in
one week from the day it was commenced, the stockade was complete, its
gate excepted.