his return to Calumet:--

"You see, mother, everybody except Baptiste and myself took a hand, and
just worked like beavers. I wish you could have seen the men. And Mr.
Johnston--why, he was in two places at once most of the time, or at least
seemed to be! It was grand fun watching them. The first thing they did
was to cut down a lot of trees--splendid big fellows, that would make the
trees round here look pretty small, I can tell you. Then they chopped off
all the branches and cut up the trunks into the lengths that suited, and
laid them one on the top of the other until they made a wall about as
high as Mr. Johnston, or perhaps higher, in the shape of one big room
forty feet long by thirty feet wide, Mr. Johnston said. It looked very
funny then--just like a huge pig-pen, with no windows and only one
door--on the side that faced the river. Next day they laid long timbers
across the top of the wall, resting them in the middle on four great
posts they called 'scoop-bearers.' Funny name, isn't it? But they called
them that because they bear the 'scoops' that make the roof; and a grand
roof it is, I tell you. The scoops are small logs hollowed out on one
side and flat on the other; and they lay them on the cross timbers in
such a way that the edges of one fit into the hollows of two others, so
that the rain hasn't a chance to get in, no matter how bard it tries.
Next thing they made the floor; and that wasn't a hard job, for they just
made logs flat on two sides and laid them on the ground, so that it was a
pretty rough sort of a floor. All the cracks were stuffed tight with moss
and mud, and a big bank of earth thrown up around the bottom of the wall
to keep the draught out.

"But you should have seen the beds, or 'bunks,' as they called them, for
the men. I don't believe you could ever sleep on them. They were nothing
but board platforms all around three sides of the room, built on a slant