The skin was given to Catharine to sleep on.
The boys were now busy from morning till night chopping down trees for
house-logs. It was a work of time and labour, as the axe was blunt, and the
oaks hard to cut; but they laboured on without grumbling, and Kate watched
the fall of each tree with lively joy. They were no longer dull; there was
something to look forward to from day to day-they were going to commence
housekeeping in good earnest and they should be warm and well lodged before
the bitter frosts of winter could come to chill their blood. It was a
joyful day when the log walls of the little shanty were put up, and the
door hewed out. Windows they had none, so they did not cut out the spaces
for them; [Footnote: Many a shanty is put up in Canada without windows, and
only an open space for a door, with a rude plank set up to close it in at
night.] they could do very well without, as hundreds of Irish and Highland
emigrants have done before and since.
A pile of stones rudely cemented together with wet clay and ashes against
the logs, and a hole cut in the roof, formed the chimney and hearth in this
primitive dwelling.
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