Meanwhile Arthur had measured the dimensions of the shanty, by pacing along and across: sixteen feet one way, twelve the other. Narrow limits for the in-door life of a family; but the cottage had somewhat grown with their growth, and thrown out a couple of small bed-chambers, like buds of incipient shanties, from the main trunk. A curiosity of wood-craft it looked, so mossy, gnarled, and weather-beaten, that one could easily have believed it had sprung from the ground without the intervention of hands, a specimen of some gigantic forest fungus.
'I'll leave a charge in my will that it's not to be disturbed,' said Hiram. ''Twould be sacrilege to move a log of the whole consarn. D'ye hear, Sam?'
His son had just come up and shaken hands; for this was a matutinal expedition of Mr. Holt and his guests round the farm. Being given to habits of extreme earliness, the former was wont to rouse any one in the house whose company he fancied, to go with him in his morning walks; and the Wynns had been honoured by a knocking-up at five o'clock for that purpose. Mr. Holt had strode into their room, flung open the window shutters and the sash with a resounding hand which completely dissipated sleep, and rendered it hardly matter of choice to follow him, since no repose was to be gained by lying in bed. Sam's clear brown eyes sparkled as he saw the victims promenading after his tall father at the Gothic hour of six, and marked Arthur furtively rubbing his eyes.
'You're tremendously early people here,' remarked Arthur, when young Holt joined them. 'I had a mind to turn round and close the shutters again, but was afraid I might affront your father.'
'Affront him! oh no; but he'd just come again and again to rouse you, till you were compelled to submit in self-defence. He wakes up young people on principle, he says.'
'Well, he practises his precepts,' rejoined Arthur, 'and seems to have trained his children in the same.'
'Yes, he has made us all practical men; seven chips of the old block,' observed Sam.
'Seven brothers!' ejaculated Arthur. 'I saw only three last night. And are they all as tall as you?'
'About forty-four feet of length among us,' said Sam. 'We're a long family in more ways than one;' and he looked down from his altitude of seventy-five inches on the young Irishman.
'It is quite a pleasant surprise to see your sister,' Arthur remarked.