lot of things in one afternoon, so Polly and I started for town content.

"Those people can't be very luxurious out there," said Polly, "but they
can have good food and clean beds. They have all out-doors to breathe
in, and I do not see what more one can ask on a fine August evening, do
you, Mr. Headman?"

I could think of a few things, but I did not mention them, for her first
words recalled some scenes of my early life on a backwoods farm: the log
cabin, with hardly ten nails in it, the latch-string, the wide-mouthed
stone-and-stick chimney, the spring-house with its deep crocks, the
smoke-house made of a hollow gum-tree log, the ladder to the loft where
I slept, and where the snows would drift on the floor through the rifts
in the split clapboards that roofed me over. I wondered if to-day was so
much better than yesterday as conditions would warrant us in expecting.




CHAPTER VII

THE HORSE-AND-BUGGY MAN


August 3 found me at Four Oaks in the early afternoon. A great hollow
had been dug for the cellar, and Thompson said that it would take but
one more full day to finish it. Piles of material gave evidence that the
mason was alert, and the house-mover had already dropped his long
timbers, winch, and chains by the side of the farm-house.