"What's c.h.i.n.king?" asked the Doctor.

"Why, you see," answered Jack, "the logs of which our house or hut is built, are not quite straight, though they are the straightest we could find in the woods. There are s.p.a.ces between them that are open, and when the zero weather comes we should be very uncomfortably cold in there if these s.p.a.ces remained open. No fire that we could make in our chimney would keep us warm under such conditions. So we must stop up the cracks.

We'll do that by fitting these pieces of c.h.i.n.king into the cracks between the logs, and then 'daubing' the smaller cracks with mud. That's an operation that will try your resolution, Doctor, and determine whether you are really only sixteen years old, as we voted that you were, or are a much older person, to be specially considered by us boys--for I don't know any more disagreeable job than daubing a log cabin."

"Good!" answered the Doctor. "I'll submit myself to the test very gladly. You'll show me how to 'daub' of course, and if I don't 'daub'

with the best and youngest of you, then I'll give up and go down the mountain, acknowledging myself a failure. But I give you fair warning that I don't expect or intend either to give up or to go down the mountain."

"We should all be very sorry if you did, Doctor. We've adopted you now.

We've decreed that for this winter, at any rate, you are only sixteen years of age, and upon my word, if you'll allow me to say so--"

"Now, stop right there," broke in the Doctor. "Don't say 'if you'll allow me to say so.' That undoes the whole arrangement. You fellows have accepted me as a boy among boys, and you've got to stick to that. There are to be no deferences to me. There is to be precisely the same comradeship between me and the rest of you that exists among yourselves, otherwise I shall consider myself an intruder."

"All right," responded Jack, seizing the Doctor's hand and pressing it warmly. "We all feel that you are altogether one of us, and I for one shall hereafter treat you as such. So when the daubing time comes I'll set you your task like the rest of them and I'll criticize every crevice you leave open. What with an open roof--for a clapboard roof is very open--through which the wind can blow at its own sweet will, and what with the necessity of keeping the door open most of the time for light, it's going to be very hard work to keep the place comfortably warm."

"But why keep the door open for light?" asked the Doctor. "Why not let in the light through windows?"

"We haven't any windows," answered Jack, "and we haven't any sash or gla.s.s to make them with."

"Of course not," said the Doctor, "but still, if you'll let me, I'll show you how to have windows that will keep out the wind and let in light at the same time. I've all the necessary materials in my shoulder pack."

"I can't guess how you're going to do it, Doctor, but at any rate I accept your statement, and if you'll tell me what sized openings you want in the walls for your windows, I'll go at once and saw them out."

"That's what troubles me," said the Doctor. "I don't see how we are going to make window openings without sawing through the logs, and I don't see how that is to be done without weakening the structure, and letting the unsupported ends of the logs fall out of place."

"Oh, that's easy enough," answered Jack. "You tell me what sized window openings you want in our walls, and I'll take care of the logs."

The Doctor thought a moment, and then said:

"Well, we ought to have two windows, each about two feet and a half one way by about three feet or a little more the other way."

"Does it make any difference," asked Jack, "whether the long way is up and down, or to the right and left?"

"None. You can make the openings long either way and short either way."

"Good!" answered Jack. "Then I'll make them long to right and left and short in their up and down dimensions, so that I shall have to saw out only two logs for each window."

Jack went immediately to work. He split out six or eight boards, each four times the thickness of any ordinary clapboard, and, taking a handful of the small supply of nails on hand, went to the cabin now well advanced in construction, and selected the places for the two window openings. Then he nailed the thick boards securely to the logs, one on each side of one of the proposed window openings. The boards were long enough to reach over four of the logs. Jack nailed them securely to all four of the logs, thus binding the timbers together, and making each a support to all of the others. Then he sawed out three-foot lengths of the two middle logs, leaving their ends securely supported by the boards which were firmly nailed to them, and also to the uncut logs above and below. Then, to make all secure, he fitted pieces of his thick boards to the ends of the sawed logs, and nailed them firmly into place as an additional protection against sagging.

"Now, then, Doctor," he called out, "come on with your windows. I'm curious to see what they are like."

"In a minute," answered the Doctor, who was busy with his materials on a log in front of the house. He had taken two strips of thin yard-wide muslin each a little over four feet long, and with the inside of a bacon rind he was busily greasing them.

The result of the greasing was to render the thin cotton fabric quite translucent, and indeed, almost transparent. With tacks, of which there was a small supply in the Doctor's own pack, he securely fastened one of these pieces of greased muslin on the outside of the window opening that Jack had made, and the other on the inside, leaving a s.p.a.ce of several inches between.

"There," he said, when all was done, "that will let in light almost as well as gla.s.s could do, and it will keep out wind and cold even better than the logs you sawed away could have done, no matter how well c.h.i.n.ked and daubed they might have been."

Then he and Jack proceeded to deal with the other window opening in the same way. By the time that they had done the boys were clamorously calling them to supper, and they were not reluctant to answer the summons. By this time the roof was on the house and a door of clapboards, split out of double thickness, was hung by hinges made of limber twigs, called withes, to pegs in the logs, and supplied with a wooden latch, catching into a wooden slot. The door opening was made precisely as the window holes were. The mountain form of log cabin involved the least possible use of metal in its construction, and except for the nails used in making the door and windows this one had involved the use of no metal at all. It was not all done, by any means, but at least its outer sh.e.l.l was done after two days of hard work, and the rest could be safely left till the morrow--all of it, except one thing, of which Jack was mindful during supper.

CHAPTER VI

_After Supper_

"Boys," said Jack while supper was in process of consumption, "I'm afraid we've all got to do a little work to-night by moonlight.

Fortunately there is a moon, but these thin, fleecy clouds mean snow or I'm mistaken."

"What is the work to be done, Jack," asked Ed. "Why," said Jack, "we've got to have some dry broom straw for our beds, and we've got to gather it to-night. Otherwise it'll all be wet."

"Broom straw" in Virginia means a tall gra.s.s of the prairie gra.s.s kind, which grows thickly in every open s.p.a.ce. In winter it is dry and nothing makes a sweeter smelling bed.

The boys were tired after their hard day's work, but their enthusiasm instantly outvoted their weariness, for their proceedings had not yet lost the character of a sort of frolic in their minds.

"Besides," said little Tom as the supper drew to an end, "I for one am not half as tired as I was when we sat down to eat."

"Naturally not," said the Doctor.

"But why is it?" asked Tom. "I don't see how I have got rested so soon."

"You've fired up," replied the Doctor. "Did you ever see an engine that worked badly for want of steam? Did you ever observe what the engineer does in that case?"

"Yes, of course; he sets the stoker to firing up under the boiler. But what has that to do with getting tired and getting rested again? I don't see the connection."

"Yet it is clear enough," the Doctor responded. "The human system is a machine. It must have energy or force or whatever you choose to call it, to enable it to do its work. Now an engine gets its energy from the coal or wood burned under its boiler. This human machine derives its energy solely from food put into the stomach. When you are tired it means simply that your supply of physical force has run low. When you eat you replenish the supply, just as firing up does it for the engine."

"But Doctor," said Jack with an accent of puzzled inquiry, "how about those people that are always tired--'born tired' as they say? They eat, but they never get over being tired."

"Dyspeptics, every one of them," replied the Doctor. "It doesn't help an engine to shovel coal into its furnace if the coal doesn't burn. In the same way it doesn't strengthen a man to eat unless he digests and a.s.similates his food."

"Well now, if you people have sufficiently a.s.similated your food and your ideas," broke in little Tom, "let's get to work."

Some of the boys pulled the gra.s.s and piled it in rude shocks. The others carried it to the hut and bestowed it in one corner, ready for use. As they carried on the work the moon slowly went out, and just as they were finishing it, Jim Chenowith called out:

"There's the snow," and very gently the flakes began descending. "Jack you're a good weather prophet, and this time it's lucky for us that you are. Otherwise we should have had wet broom straw to sleep on all winter. By the way, how are we going to arrange our beds?"

"Why, we'll build a platform of small poles along the eastern wall of our house--the fireplace being on the western side. We'll divide this platform into compartments, each to serve as a bed. We'll lay clapboards on the poles to make a smooth surface, and on them we'll pile all the broom straw we've got. Then we'll wrap ourselves in our blankets and crawl in. Do you see?"

"Yes, but how about the fellows that must sleep under the Doctor's muslin window?" asked Harry. "Won't they sleep pretty cold, Doctor?"

"I don't think so," answered the Doctor. "The windows will keep out the cold quite as well as the logs themselves do."

"But how can they? How can two thin sheets of muslin keep cold out or heat in, which I believe is the better way of putting it?" asked Harry.

"They can't," answered the Doctor. "Bring those two sheets of muslin together and they would let heat out and cold in as freely almost as an open hole does. It isn't the muslin that keeps the cold out or the heat in--which ever way you choose to put it. It is the imprisoned air between the two pieces of muslin. There is hardly anywhere a worse conductor of heat than confined air. That is why in building fire proof structures in the great cities they use hollow bricks for part.i.tion walls. No amount of heat on one side can pa.s.s through the confined air in the bricks and set fire to anything on the other side of the wall. In the contracts for such buildings it is often stipulated that the owner shall be free to build as hot a bonfire as he pleases in any room he may select, and if it sets fire to anything in any other room the contractor shall pay a heavy penalty."

"But where did you get your idea of greased muslin windows, Doctor?"