Showing how to lay poles to make a roof, and cover them with sheets of elm and basswood bark, Dennis left while there was daylight enough to show him the way.  Archie was alone, buried in the bush, yet was in high spirits.  The land he stood on he owned.  Everything had gone well with him so far and he looked with steady confidence into the future.  When the shanty was finished he had to admit it was only a hovel, which he would replace by one fit to be the home of the father and mother whose figures were often before his mind’s eye.  With hands still tender, he went on felling trees, selecting the smaller, and when he had got a heap together he set fire, for he needed a clearance in which he wanted to plant potatoes.  On Saturday coming he left for Magarth’s, for he had promised to post up his accounts of the week.  On finishing all Magarth had to do, Archie wrote his mother.  When he landed at Montreal he had sent a letter to his father telling of the voyage and his safe arrival.  Now he had to send them word of his having got a lot and that he had made a start in clearing it.  Sunday the little hamlet was deserted.  The hired men had gone to visit friends and had taken Magarth’s boys with them.  ‘Tis the only outing they get,’ explained Magarth, who was surprised on Archie’s preparing to return to his shanty, for he expected he would stay till evening.  Not wishing to be beholden too much to his kind friend, he shouldered what supplies he had bought the night before and started.  Among the supplies was a hoe and a bag of potatoes to plant amid the stumps.

The routine of his daily life was monotonous—­up with the sun to attack the trees which stood between him and a livelihood.  It was lonely but he never grew despondent.  Singing, whistling, shouting, he kept at his work.  Two of the songs of Burns were his favorites—­a Man’s a Man for a’ that and Scots wha hae.  On coming to the line, Liberty with every blow, he drove his ax into the tree with vim, and, indeed, the trees at that time were the enemies he had to fight.  Saturdays he went to Magarth’s to do what writing he might have, for his daughter was in no hurry to leave Toronto.  Each Monday found Archie more handy with the ax, and neither heat nor mosquitoes caused him to slacken in extending his clearance.  Wet days alone made him take rest in his shanty, in a corner of which was his bed of hemlock boughs and fern leaves.  When summer waned and the nights grew cold the lack of a chimney in his shanty made living in it intolerable, for the smoke circulated round until it found the hole in the roof intended for its escape.  He thought over plans to get a chimney, but could hit on none that he could carry out without some one to help him.  From time to time he had burnings of brush-heaps, storing the ashes in a hole he had dug in the side of a hillock and covering them with big sheets of bark to keep them dry.  The end of September, on making his customary visit to Magarth’s, he found a letter