"Oh, then, you're going to make clapboards out of this tree to roof our shanty with and to close up its gables."
"I'm going to make clapboards for our roof," answered Jack, "but not for our gables. They'll be made of logs, in true mountain fashion."
"But how is that possible?" eagerly asked the Doctor.
"I'll show you when we come to build. I can't very well explain it in advance. And another thing, Doctor, you remember that we have only ten pounds or so of nails, all told."
"That's true!" exclaimed the Doctor, almost in consternation. "We can't roof our house till somebody goes down the mountain and brings a supply."
"That's where you are mightily mistaken, Doctor. There isn't a log cabin in these mountains that has a nail in its roof."
"But how then are the clapboards held in place?"
"That again is a thing I can show you far better than I can explain it without demonstration. But we must first get our clapboards, and if you'll go back to the camp and bring a cross cut saw, I'll have this giant of the forest laid low by the time you get back, and then you and I will cut it into four-foot lengths for clapboards."
It should be explained that in the mountains of Virginia the word "clapboard" and the simpler word "board," mean something quite different from what they signify elsewhere. When the Virginia mountaineer speaks of a "board" or a "clapboard" he means a rough shingle, four feet long, simply split out of a piece of timber and not dressed in any way.
When the Doctor returned with the cross cut saw, Jack first marked off ten feet of his great tree at the butt and the two set to work to sever it.