When the rainy days came he spent his time in the shelter of his little arbor cutting the “shakes,” or shingles, which were to furnish the roof of Pepeeta’s home.

The days and weeks fled by and the opening in the forest grew apace.  He measured it by night with a celestial arithmetic, using the stars for his triangulations, and as one after another of them became visible where before they had been obscured by the foliage of the trees, he smiled, and felt as if he were cutting his farm out of heaven instead of earth.  It was really cut out of both!

His Sundays were spent at the old homestead with his loved ones, and once every week Pepeeta came with Steven to bring him luxuries which her own hands had prepared, and to pass the afternoon with him at his work in the “clearing.”

Those were memorable hours, possessing that three-fold existence with which every hour can be endowed by the soul of man—­anticipation—­realization—­recollection.  In this way a single moment sometimes becomes almost synchronous with eternity.

It would have been impossible to tell which of the three was happiest, but Pepeeta was always the center of interest, attention and devotion.  Her whole nature seemed to be aroused and called into play; all her countless charms were incessantly evoked; her inimitable laughter resounded through the woods and challenged the emulous birds to unsuccessful competition.  Seriousness alternated with gaiety, coquetry with gravity.  Some of the time she spent in gathering flowers to adorn her lover’s booth, and some in carrying to the rubbish pile such limbs and branches as her strength would permit her to handle.

Nothing could have been more charming than the immense efforts that she put forth with such grace, to lift with all her might some branch that her lover had tossed aside with a single hand!  The attitudes into which these efforts threw her body were as graceful as those into which the water threw the cresses by its ceaseless flow, or the wind bent the tree tops by its fitful gusts.

Steven was frantic with delight at the free, open life of the woods.  He chased the squirrels and rabbits, he climbed the trees to gaze into the nests of the birds, and caught the butterflies in his hat.

David entered into all their pleasures, but with a chastened and restrained delight, for he could never forget that he was an exile and a penitent.

There were two days in the season when the regular routine of the woodsman’s work was interrupted by functions which possess a romantic charm.  One was when the Friends and neighbors from a wide region assembled to help him “raise” the walls of his cabin.

From all sides they appeared, in their picturesque costumes of homespun or fur.  Suddenly, through the ever-open gates of the forest, teams of horses crashed, drawing after them clanking log chains, and driven by men who carried saws and “cant hooks” on their broad shoulders.  Loud halloos of greeting, cheerful words of encouragement, an eager and agreeable bustle of business, filled the clearing.