More words of soothing influence Mark dropped into her ear, until at length her spirits were calmed, and she was enabled to join him in earnest thanksgiving to Heaven for their preservation. He fanned her till she dropped asleep. And then, late as it was, he went and busied himself with many things that remained to be done—putting glass in the windows, cutting up and salting down the nearly fatal quarter of beef, ripping off the head of the barrel of flour, &c.—and doing all so quietly as not to disturb the sleeper. CHAPTER XXIII. CABIN-KEEPING. “There is probation to decree, Many and long must the trials be; Thou shalt victoriously endure, If that brow is true and those eyes are sure.”—_Browning._ A night’s undisturbed repose restored Rosalie’s exhausted nervous energy. The young couple arose early in the morning to begin their first day of house, or rather _cabin_-keeping, for the difference of style requires a difference of term. They had anticipated toil and privation, and had thought they were prepared to meet them. But it is one thing to think in a general way about work and want, and quite another to feel them in all their irritating and exhausting details; and the first day of housekeeping in the forest log cabin taught them this difference. They had no garden, no cow, no poultry, and there was no market where to procure the necessaries that these should have supplied. Everything that could be bought at the village shops had been provided; yet their first breakfast consisted of coffee without cream or milk, and biscuits without butter. But mutual love, and hope, and trust, sweetened the meal, and even their little privations furnished matters of jest. And when breakfast was over, and Mark was preparing to bid his “little sweetheart,” as he called her, farewell for the day, and promising to return by four o’clock, she gaily asked him what he would _like_ for dinner, and he replied by ordering a bill of fare, that _might_ have been furnished by some famous Eastern or European hotel. Suddenly, in the midst of their merriment, she thought of the wolves and trembled—yet restrained the expression of her fears. But the eye of affection read her thoughts, and Mark hastened to assure her that there was no more to dread—that the cabin was the last place on earth that the same animals would seek again—that they would not come within sight of its smoking chimney. Her trust in his judgment and his truthfulness completely reassured her doubting heart, and set it at perfect rest. And she let him go to his business with a gay, glad smile.