The roof was of hand-rived clapboards which Lance and Sylvane got out; but all the flooring was of tongued and grooved boards, brought from the Hepzibah planing mill, narrow, smooth, well-fitted, well-laid. There were not in all the Turkey Track neighborhoods such door-and window-frames, nor doors of such quality, all hauled up from the planing mill. When it came to the chimney, Lance was the master hand, a mason by trade, and sent for far and near to build chimneys or doctor one which refused to draw. He had chosen the stones from the creek-bed, water-washed, clean, offering traceries of white here and there on their steely, blue-gray surfaces. He debated long over the question of a rounded arch with keystone for the front of [112] his fireplace, as is the manner of all the older chimneys in the mountains; but finally he and Sylvane found one day a single straight arch rock so long that it could be laid across the jambs, and this he shaped a bit and hauled up for the purpose. The day he set in the chimney-throat the iron bar from which to hang the kettles, Sylvane lay watching him. "Now, that's what Sis' Roxy's been a-wantin' ever sence I can remember," the younger brother commented, as Lance manipulated the mortar and set stone upon stone with nice skill. "Uh-huh," assented the proprieter of Lance's Laurel lightly. "She wants it too bad. If she'd just want it easier, maybe she'd get it, one of these days." He laughed drolly down at the boy lying on the grass, and both remembered the long dreary tirades by which poor Roxy had tried to get her brother to so amend the home hearth that cooking should be rendered less laborious for her. And it was to this home that Lance Cleaverage brought his bride. Here it was that he hoped to build that true abiding place which such spirits as Lance seek, and crave, and seldom find. The hearthstone he had himself laid, the skilfully built chimney, with its dream of Callista sitting on one side of the hearth and himself on the other--these were gropings after the answers such as he always asked of life. [113] "This ain't what Pap calls a sojourning place--this here's going to be a real home, Callista," he said eagerly, as the two young creatures went about it examining their new habitation the next morning. "It'll be cool in the summer, and good and warm in the winter. That chimney'll draw--just look at the fire. I never have built a chimney that smoked." "Did you build the chimney, Lance?" Callista asked him, leaning on his arm. "I did that," he told her. "They're always after me to build other folks' chimneys and lay other people's hearthstones, and I ain't so very keen to do it--and it don't pay much--up here. But my own--one for you and me to sit by--"