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Updated: May 21, 2025
When the big wood-fires were lighted and there was snow and rain outside, and yams and chestnuts to roast in the ashes, and stories to be told and talked over in the glow of the red birch-log and snapping, flaming hickory sticks, the child used to feel as if she and Uncle Tom were even nearer together and more comfortable than at any other time.
A fine tableau he made of a winter's evening, in the red light of a birch-log fire, as he sat for hours watching its progress, with sleepy, half-shut eyes, changing his position only to reach the cider-mug on the shelf near him.
There was, he knew, little time to lose, and in another five minutes he stood, still wearing his white-sprinkled furs, in a room of the birch-log building. "Here are your accounts, Macdonald, and while we've pulled up our losses, I can't help thinking we have just got out in time," he said.
There were still smears of dust upon the uncovered floor. The birch-log walls had been rudely paneled half-way up, but the half-seasoned boards had cracked with the heat, and exuded streaks of resin to which the grime and dust had clung. A pail, which contained potato peelings, stood amid a litter of old long-boots and broken harness against one wall.
It then contained a table, a carpenter's bench, and a couple of chairs, and there were still smears of dust upon the uncovered floor. The birch-log walls had been rudely panelled with match-boarding half-way up, which was a somewhat unusual luxury, but the half-seasoned boards had rent with the heat, and exuded streaks of resin to which the grime and dust had clung.
It was torn up with wheel ruts about the house, for the wooden building rose abruptly without fence or garden from the waste of whitened grass. Close to it there stood a birch-log barn or stables, its sides curiously ridged and furrowed where the trunks were laid on one another, roofed with wooden shingles that had warped into hollows here and there.
Lander's consisted then of five or six frame houses and stores, a hotel of the same material, several sod stables, and a few birch-log barns; and its inhabitants considered it one of the most promising places in Western Canada. That, however, is the land of promise, a promise which is in due time usually fulfilled, and the men of Lander's were, for the most part, shrewdly practical optimists.
A fine tableau he made of a winter's evening, in the red light of a birch-log fire, as he sat for hours watching its progress, with sleepy, half-shut eyes, changing his position only to reach the cider-mug on the shelf near him.
Still, he could see nothing but short, gray grass ahead; he must hold on; there might be bluffs or broken country beyond the skyline. At length a small square block cut against the dazzling brightness and slowly grew into a lonely homestead. After some consideration, George headed for it, and toward noon reached a little, birch-log dwelling, with a sod stable beside it.
Close to the house stood a birch-log barn or stables, its sides curiously ridged and furrowed where the trunks were laid on one another. Further away rose a long building of sod, and a great shapeless yellow mound with a domed top towered behind it. It was most unlike a trim English rick, and Agatha wondered what it could be.
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