Next morning six men came and spent the day in clearing space for the shanty and in making logs for it. The day after, Braxton with two of the men went to Todd’s to buy boards and rafted them down the river. On the third day the raising took place, and that night, though it was not finished, we slept in it, and proud we were, for the house as well as the land was our own. It was quite a while before Braxton could finish it, for there was more pressing work to do, and for a month and more our only door was a blanket. The fire was on the hearth with an open chimney made of poles covered with clay. And here I must tell of my first trial at baking. We had brought a bag of flour and, once established in our shanty, I resolved to make a loaf. As you know, in Scotland there is no baking of bread in the houses of the commonality, and though nobody could beat me at scones or oat cake, I had never seen a loaf made. I thought, however, there was no great knack about it. I knew hops were needed, and sent one of my boys with a pail to borrow some from my neighbor, who sent it back half full. I set to work, and after making a nice dough I mixed the hops with it, and moulded a loaf, which my oldest son, who had seen the process while visiting round, undertook to bake. He put it into a Dutch oven, or chaudron, and heaping hot ashes over it, we waited for an hour, when the chaudron was taken out and the cover lifted. Instead of a nice, well-raised loaf, there was at the bottom of it a flat black cake. “Maybe it will taste better than it looks,” says I, thrusting a knife at it, but the point was turned, and we found our loaf to be so hard that you could have broken it with a hammer. And the taste! It was bitter as gall. Well, that was a good lesson to me, and I was not above asking my neighbors after that about matters on which I was ignorant.