It was now October, and time to being harvesting the crop on the little plantation, which something very like an inspiration had prompted Philip to plant. While Lieutenant Coleman continued work on the house, stopping the chinks between the logs with clay, and repairing the roof of the hut with spare shingles, Bromley and Philip "topped" the corn, cutting off the stalks above the ripened ears. Then the potatoes were thrown out of the mellow soil with a wooden shovel, and left to dry in the sun, while a level place was prepared in the center of the plot, and thickly spread with a carpet of dry stalks. Upon this surface, after removing a few bushels to the hut, the crop was gathered into a conical heap and thatched over with stalks, and then the whole was thickly covered with earth and trenched about to turn off the water. It was estimated that this cache contained thirty bushels, which, according to the table in the Blue Book (Revised Army Regulations), would exceed the potato ration of three men for a period of five years. From the day of their arrival on the mountain, Lieutenant Coleman had never failed to make a daily entry in the station journal; and now that they had set up a country for themselves, he foresaw that the continuance of this practice would be necessary if they were not to lose the record of weeks and months. His entry was always brief. Often it was no more than the date, and even the more important events were set down with the utmost brevity and precision. Once a week he noted the recurrence of the Sabbath, and on that day they suspended ordinary labor, and, if the weather was pleasant, inspected their increasing domestic comforts on the mountain-top and laid their plans for the future. After their military habit, the morning of Sunday was devoted to personal cleanliness and to tidying up about their quarters. As the commissary supply of yellow bars diminished, it was evident that the time would soon come when they should be obliged to make their own soap. Back of the chestnut-tree in which they had taken refuge from the bear was a peculiar hollowed rock, and above it a flat shelf of stone, on which Philip erected a hollow log for leaching ashes. A little patient chipping of the upper stone with the ax-head made a shallow furrow along which the lye would trickle from the leach, and fall into the natural basin in the rock below, which was large enough to hold a half-barrel. This was a happy device, as the strong liquid would have eaten its way through any vessel other than an iron pot or an earthen jar, of which unfortunately they possessed neither.