But Margery could even fry pork without causing it to swim in grease, and at a venison steak, a professed cook was not her superior. She also understood various little mysteries, in the way of converting their berries and fruits of the wilderness into pleasant dishes; and Corporal Flint soon affirmed that it was a thousand pities she did not live in a garrison, which, agreeably to his view of things, was something like placing her at the comptoir of the Cafe de Paris, or of marrying her to some second Vatel. With the eating and drinking, the building advanced pari passu. Pigeonswing brought in his venison, his ducks, his pigeons, and his game of different varieties, daily, keeping the larder quite as well supplied as comported with the warmth of the weather; while the others worked on the new chiente. In order to obtain materials for this building, one so much larger than his old abode, Ben went up the Kalamazoo about half a mile, where he felled a sufficient number of young pines, with trunks of about a foot in diameter, cutting them into lengths of twenty and thirty feet, respectively. These lengths, or trunks, were rolled into the river, down which they slowly floated, until they arrived abreast of Castle Meal, where they were met by Peter, in a canoe, who towed each stick, as it arrived, to the place of landing. In this way, at the end of two days' work, a sufficient quantity of materials was collected to commence directly on the building itself. Log-houses are of so common occurrence, as to require no particular description of the one now put up, from us. It was rather less than thirty feet in length, and one-third narrower than it was long. The logs were notched, and the interstices were filled by pieces of the pine, split to a convenient size. The roof was of bark, and of the simplest construction, while there was neither door nor window; though one aperture was left for the first, and two for the last. Corporal Flint, however, was resolved that not only a door should be made, as well as shutters for the windows, but that the house should, in time, be picketed. When le Bourdon remonstrated with him on the folly of taking so much unnecessary pains, it led to a discussion, in which the missionary even felt constrained to join. “What's the use--what's the use?” exclaimed le Bourdon a little impatiently, when he found the corporal getting to be in earnest in his proposal. “Here have I lived, safely, two seasons in Castle Meal, without any pickets or palisades; and yet you want to turn this new house into a regular garrison!” “Aye, Bourdon, that was in peaceable times; but these is war times. I've seen the fall of Fort Dearborn, and I don't want to see the fall of another post this war. The Pottawattamies is hostile, even Peter owns; and the Pottawattamies has been here once, as you say yourself, and may come ag'in.”