In response to the summons a short, stout, smooth-faced, and decidedly good-natured looking Frenchman, who had been busy at one of the fires, came over to the foreman.
"See here, Baptiste; this lad's to be your chore-boy this winter, and I don't want you to be too hard on him—savez? Let him have plenty of work, but not more than his share."
Baptiste examined Frank's sturdy figure with much the same smile of approval that he might bestow upon a fine capon that he was preparing for the pot, and murmured out something like,—
"Bien, m'sieur. I sall be easy wid him if ee's a good boy."
The foreman then said to Frank,—
"There, Frank, go with Baptiste, and he'll give you work enough."
So Frank went dutifully off with the Frenchman.
He soon found out what his work was to be. Baptiste was cook, and he was his assistant, not so much in the actual cooking, for Baptiste looked after that himself, but in the scouring of the pots and pans, the keeping up of the fires, the setting out of the food, and such other supplementary duties. Not very dignified or inspiring employment, certainly, especially for a boy "with a turn for books and figures." But Frank had come to the camp prepared to undertake, without a murmur, any work within his powers that might be given him, and he now went quietly and steadily at what was required of him.
As soon as breakfast was despatched, Johnston called the men together to give them directions about the building of the shanty, which was the first thing of all to be done; and having divided them up into parties, to each of which a different task was assigned, he set them at work without delay.
Frank was very glad that attention to his duties would not prevent his watching the others at theirs; for what could be more interesting than to study every stage of the erection of the building that was to be their shelter and home during the long winter months now rapidly approaching? It was a first experience for him, and nothing escaped his vigilant eye. This is the way he described the building of the shanty to his mother on his return to Calumet:—