liberty, affording me intense sport, and occasionally a dinner. Forty-eight stately cattle and my old horse 'Charley' (how he can go!) are the only remnants of the large herds once owned by the noble proprietor"
CHAPTER IX.
As they neared the "hospitable mansion" the style of its architecture became fully developed. It was a square building of one story. The four walls were raised some seven feet from the ground, and were composed of split slabs set upright about three inches in thickness, and many of them standing at least three inches apart. Dodge explained that he was particularly fond of air, and therefore he was rather glad that the green timber had shrunk considerably. The hut was roofed with broad sheets of stringey bark lapped one over the other, and this perhaps was the most efficient work of the whole. The chimney, which occupied a considerable space, was built up with mud and turf. There was an apology for a window, which was stuffed up with flour-bags and dried grass; but the door and its hinges was a triumph of inventive skill, of which Dodge was justly proud.
After relating the difficulties which had beset his attempt at building, heightened by the want of several articles which are generally held to be indispensable (one constant source of annoyance was a great scarcity of nails), Dodge came to the matter of the hinges.—"I had a boy," he said, "who helped me with the cattle.—Oh! he was a boy.—I called him 'the Gorger:' first, because he was in doubt about his own name; and secondly, because, although only a boy in years, he
