“You’ll have your cellar under half of it; how high will you have it?”
“I never have thought anything about that.”
“Well, I’d drop the beams down, and have it a story and a half; that great chamber’ll be the best part of the house; ’twill make you a splendid corn-house; that’s the way your grandfather’s was, and many a bushel of corn I’ve shelled in it. If I’m boss, as you, Ben, are strong enough to hold the scraper alone, you and Joe can take the plough, and go to ploughing and scraping out the cellar, and I’ll go to the woods and pick out and cut the trees.”
“The sun is getting low,” said Ben; “it is time we were making calculations for sleeping to-night, whether in the ‘gundelow,’ with a sail over us, or in a bush camp.”
“I go in for the bush camp,” said Uncle Isaac.
“And I’m the boy to build it,” said Joe; “takes me to do that.”
“Go ahead, Joe, and build it, and we’ll get the wood for the fire.”
Without a moment’s hesitation, Joe went into the edge of a little clump of bushes, and in a few minutes cut out a space about twelve feet square, leaving an opening between two trees, where he went in, of about three feet. As fast as he cut the trees, he thrust them back, and jammed them in among the others, making a thick wall; he then wove two or three small trees in on the side to keep them from falling in. He then cut three or four small beech limbs, twisted them into withes, bent down the tops of three or four trees on the sides, tied them together with the withes, thus forming the roof; then getting the boat’s sail, threw it over the top, and a little brush over that, to break the force of the rain. He then strewed some hemlock brush on the floor to sleep on.
“I’ll risk any rain-storm driving us out of that,” said Joe, contemplating his edifice with great satisfaction.
“I must have a door,” said Joe, “or these plaguy oxen and sheep’ll be in there when we ain’t, and bother us.”