slept.

There was a very rude table, a single board set up on sticks; and a
bench or two, together with a wooden chest of some size, completed
the furniture. Tools were suspended from the walls, it is true; and
no less than three rifles, in addition to a very neat double-
barrelled "shot-gun," or fowling-piece, were standing in a corner.
These were arms collected by our hero in his different trips, and
retained quite as much from affection as from necessity, or caution.
Of ammunition, there was no very great amount visible; only three or
four horns and a couple of pouches being suspended from pegs: but
Ben had a secret store, as well as another rifle, carefully secured,
in a natural magazine and arsenal, at a distance sufficiently great
from the chiente to remove it from all danger of sharing in the
fortunes of his citadel, should disaster befall the last.

The cooking was done altogether out of doors. For this essential
comfort, le Bourdon had made very liberal provision. He had a small
oven, a sufficiently convenient fire-place, and a storehouse, at
hand; all placed near the spring, and beneath the shade of a
magnificent elm. In the storehouse he kept his barrel of flour, his
barrel of salt, a stock of smoked or dried meat, and that which the
woodsman, if accustomed in early life to the settlements, prizes
most highly, a half-barrel of pickled pork. The bark canoe had
sufficed to transport all these stores, merely ballasting handsomely
that ticklish craft; and its owner relied on the honey to perform
the same office on the return voyage, when trade or consumption
should have disposed of the various articles just named.

The reader may smile at the word "trade," and ask where were those