"Now, Doctor," he said, when the boys began showing something like skill in this work, "if you'll come with me, we'll start a chimney."
They went into the woods and set to work splitting some chestnut logs into thick slabs, six or seven feet long. With these they made a sort of crib work outside the house at the point where the fireplace was to be. This, as Jack explained, was to hold the fire place.
Inside of this crib, or box—about two feet inside—Jack drove some sharpened sticks into the ground and behind them he placed some clapboards set on edge. Then he called for mud and with it filled in the space between the clapboards and the crib walls behind. Then he set another tier of clapboards and added more mud, and so on till he had the whole inside of the slab crib lined with two feet of mud held in place by clapboards set on edge and braced with stakes.
"Now, then," said Jack, "when we build a fire the clapboards will slowly burn away, but very slowly because no air can get behind them, and in the meantime the mud will bake into one great solid brick. Now for the top of the chimney."
Then he went outside and built upon this fireplace a smoke stack, consisting of cribwork of sticks split out for the purpose, embedding each stick in a thick daubing of mud as he went.
By the time he finished it was night—for so eager had the boys been with their work that they had not stopped on this third day for dinner, but had contented themselves with cold bites left over from breakfast. In the meantime also the other boys had finished chinking and daubing the house.
"Now we're ready to move in," said Jim Chenowith as they sat down round the fire to eat their supper.
"Indeed we're not," answered little Tom. "We haven't built our bed yet or a table to eat on, or any chairs to sit on, and besides that the fireplace must have at least twenty-four hours in which to dry before we can build a fire in it. You're always in a hurry Jim. If we get comfortably moved into our winter quarters by this time day after to-morrow we'll do very well indeed."
"Yes," interposed Jack, "but we'll move in to-morrow night nevertheless. By that time we'll have the bed constructed and a table and some sort of chairs made, and we shall be much more comfortable in the house than out here under the cliff where it is very uncomfortably wet and muddy since the snow began to melt. Of course we can't have a fire in the house for two or three days yet, but we can have one outside, in front of the door."
"So the programme for to-morrow is to make beds, chairs and a table?" asked the Doctor.