Early next morning they went there; and it seemed very different in the daytime. They brought their guns with them; but of what use they supposed fire-arms would be, in a contest with supernatural foes, is not readily perceived: however, they felt stronger for having them.
Archie opened the shutters, that had been closed by the hands of Mrs. McDonald a few moments before her death, and the sunlight streamed in. In the chamber they found a wide board twenty feet long, that was planed on one side, and placed between the beds for the children to step on when they got out of bed, as the rest of the floor was laid with poles that were rough with knots and bark. They took down the joist in the room below: these had been sawed out with the whip-saw, by Mr. Seth and his brother, when they put up the partition. They were a great acquisition to the boys, almost as much as the boards; for they could not have hewn out joist accurately enough to frame together.
"Mr. McDonald didn't think, when he got Uncle Seth to make this partition, a meal-chest, and milk-shelves (what nobody else in the Run has got, and Mr. Blanchard himself ain't got), that they would take the boards to make coffins for himself and his folks; did he, Sammy?"
"Don't let's talk about that here."
They yoked the oxen, hauled their stuff to the Cuthbert house, and set about making a bench.
"How high and wide and long shall we make it?" said Archie.
"Uncle Seth told me it ought to be about as big as this table."
Cutting their joist, they halved the pieces together, and made the frame of the bench with a cross-sill at the bottom in the centre to receive the end of the spindle. How they should make the spindle, and what they should make it of, was the next thing to be considered.
They went to a piece of land that had been cleared, and the timber burnt, but had not been planted, and had partially grown up again, where were a great number of ash-sprouts, that grew luxuriantly and very straight, as is the habit of that tree; and soon found one to answer their purpose.
Two blocks, one much larger than the other, were sawed from the ends of logs,—one for a pulley (wheel the boys called it), and the other for a small wheel to receive the clay; and a hole bored in the cross-sill to admit the lower end of the spindle.