We must pass over six weeks, during which the labour was continued without intermission, and the house was raised of logs, squared and well fitted; the windows and doors were also put in, and the roof well covered in with large squares of birch-bark, firmly fixed on the rafters. The house consisted of one large room, as a dining-room, and the kitchen, with a floor of well-beaten clay, a smaller room, as a sitting-room, and three bed-rooms, all of which were floored; one of the largest of them fitted all round with bed-places against the walls, in the same way as on board of packets; this room was for the four boys, and had two spare bed-places in it. The others, which were for the two girls and Mr and Mrs Campbell, were much smaller. But before the house was half built, a large outhouse adjoining to it had been raised to hold the stores which Mr Campbell had brought with him, with a rough granary made above the store-room. The interior of the house was not yet fitted up, although the furniture had been put in, and the family slept in it, rough as it was, in preference to the tents, as they were very much annoyed with mosquitoes. The stores were now safe from the weather, and they had a roof over their heads, which was the grand object that was to be obtained. The carpenters were still very busy fitting up the interior of the house, and the other men were splitting rails for a snake-fence, and also selecting small timber for raising a high palisade round the premises. Martin had not been idle. The site of the house was just where the brushwood joined to the prairie, and Martin had been clearing it away and stacking it, and also collecting wood for winter fuel. It had been decided that four cows, which had been driven round from the fort, should be housed during the winter in a small building on the other side of the stream, which had belonged to Malachi Bone, as it was surrounded with a high snake-fence, and sufficiently large to hold them and even more. The commandant had very kindly selected the most quiet cows to milk, and Mary and Emma Percival had already entered upon their duties: the milk had been put into the store-house until a dairy could be built up. A very neat bridge had been thrown across the stream, and every morning the two girls, generally attended by Henry, Alfred, or Captain Sinclair, crossed over, and soon became expert in their new vocation as dairy-maids. Altogether, things began to wear a promising appearance. Henry and Mr Campbell had dug up as fast as Martin and Alfred cleared away the brushwood, and the garden had already been cropped with such few articles as could be put in at that season. The commandant had some pigs ready for the settlers as soon as they were ready to receive them, and had more than once come up in the boats to ascertain their progress, and to offer any advice that he might consider useful.