k. The cedar swamp was shrinking before his axe, and yielding its
fragrant timbers for the future house. From early morning till late at
night the three men never ceased labour except for short meals; having,
as their object and reward, the comfort of those dear ones who would
arrive in July or August at farthest.

The existing shanty was to be retained as kitchen, and a little room
could be railed off the end as a place for stores. Four apartments
would constitute the new house, one of them to be a sitting room for
the mother and Linda. How easy to build and furnish in fancy; how
difficult in fact! Yet the raising-bee accomplished a great deal, though
the Yankee storekeeper was discomfited to find that Davidson of Daisy
Burn had undertaken the guidance of the hive; he sulked somewhat in
consequence, and also because the consumption of spirits was not, as he
had contemplated, to intoxication. Robert was backed by his sturdy
Scottish neighbour in that resolve; and the more sensible of the workers
could not but approve.

Four walls and roof were put together by the joint-stock labour of the
day. Standing in the vacant doorway, Robert looked over the moonlit view
of woods and islanded lake well pleased.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

OLD FACES UPON NEW NEIGHBOURS.

Now, while Arthur devoted himself chiefly to the interior carpentering,
Robert burned and cleared a patch of fallow to be a garden. Their good
friend Hiram Holt, among his other useful gifts, had sent with them in
the waggon a stock of young apple trees, which had lain all winter half
buried in a corner of the hut, to be grubbed up in spring and planted
out in rows four rods apart. Beds of potatoes and turnips, set at the
edges with pumpkin seeds and squares of Indian corn, filled the garden
space in an orderly manner before the end of May; then rail fences
sprang up about it, and the first bit of forest was fairly reclaimed.

During breakfast one morning, Andy rushed in, proclaiming that a raft
was in sight on the lake, 'one 'most as big as a five-acre field,' he
said. This proved rather an imaginative description on Andy's part, like
many other of his verbal sketches; for the raft was infantine compared
with its congeners of the great lake and the St. Lawrence. A couple
of bonds lashed together--that was all; and a bond containeth twenty
cribs, and a crib containeth a variable amount of beams, according to
lumberers' arithmetical tables. Arthur recognised his