Willis also
stopped work on Thursday at noon.
The people at home knew that we were having a hard time. Grandmother and
the girls did all they could for us; and every day at noon and again at
night the old Squire, bundled up in his buffalo-skin coat, drove down to
the lake with horse and pung, and brought us a warm meal, packed in a
large box with half a dozen hot bricks.
Only one who has been chilled through all day can imagine how glad we
were to reach that warm camp at night. Indeed, except for the camp, we
could never have worked there as we did. It was a log camp, or rather
two camps, placed end to end, and you went through the first in order to
get into the second, which had no outside door. The second camp had been
built especially for cold weather. It was low, and the chinks between
the logs were tamped with moss. At this time, too, snow lay on it, and
had banked up against the walls. Inside the camp, across one end, there
was a long bunk; at the opposite end stood an old cooking-stove, that
seemed much too large for so small a camp.
At dusk we dropped work, made for the camp, shut all the doors, built
the hottest fire we could make, and thawed ourselves out.
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