Log by log the walls rose, as the horses rolled them into place with the aid of the great chains which the pioneers wrapped around them.  It was only a rude log cabin they built—­with a great, wide opening through the middle, a room on either side, and a picturesque chimney at either end; but it was not to be despised even for grace, and when warmth and comfort and adaptability to needs and opportunities are considered, there have been few buildings erected by the genius of man more justly entitled to admiration.

When this single day’s work was ended there remained nothing for David to do but chink and daub the walls with mud, cover the rude rafters of the roof with his shakes, build the chimneys out of short sticks, cob-house fashion, and cement them on the inside with clay to protect them from the flames.

The other day was the one on which, at the close of the long and genial summer, when the mass of timber and brushwood had been thoroughly seasoned by the hot suns, he set his torches to the carefully constructed piles.

Steven and Pepeeta were to share with him in the excitement of this conflagration, and David had postponed it until dusk, in order that they might enjoy its entire sublimity.  He had taken the precaution to plow many furrows around the cabin and also around the edge of the clearing, so the flames could neither destroy his house nor devastate the forest.

Such precautions were necessary, for nothing can exceed the ferocity of fire in the debris which the woodsmen scatter about them.  When the dusk had settled down on this woodland world and long shadows had crept across the clearing, wrapping themselves round the trees at its edge and scattering themselves among the thick branches till they were almost hid from view, David lighted a pine torch and gave it into the hands of the eager boy, who seized it and like a young Prometheus started forth.  A single touch to the dry tinder was enough.  With a dull explosion, the mass burst into flame.  Shouting in his exultation, the little torch-bearer rushed on, igniting pile after pile, and leaving behind him almost at every step a mighty conflagration.  At each new instant, as the night advanced, a new outburst of light illumined the darkness, until ten, twenty, fifty great heaps were roaring and seething with flames!  Great jets spouted up into the midnight heavens as if about to kiss the very stars, and suddenly expired in the illimitable space above them.  Immense sparks, shot out from these bonfires as from the craters of volcanoes, went sailing into the void around them and fell hissing into the water of the brooks or silently into the new-plowed furrows.

The clouds above the heads of the subdued and almost terrified beholders, for no one is ever altogether prepared for the absolute awfulness of such a spectacle, were glowing with the fierce light which the fires threw upon them.  Weird illuminations played fantastic tricks in the foliage from which the startled shadows had vanished.  The roar of the ever-increasing fires became louder and louder, until in very terror Pepeeta crept into David’s arms for protection, while the child who had fearlessly produced this scene of awful grandeur and destruction shouted with triumph at his play.