When we had laid the foundation of the Indian settlement, I built my house with the help of skilled men.  It was a spacious one of hewn logs, chinked with cat-and-clay plaster, showing its white ribs on the hill above the Fox.  In time I meant to cover the ribs with perennial vines.  There was a spring near the porches.  The woods banked me on the rear, and an elm spread its colossal umbrella over the roof.  Fertile fields stretched at my left, and on my right a deep ravine lined with white birches, carried a stream to the Fox.

From my stronghold to the river was a long descent.  The broadening and narrowing channel could be seen for miles.  A bushy island, beloved of wild ducks, parted the water, lying as Moses hid in osiers, amidst tall growths of wild oats.  Lily pads stretched their pavements in the oats.  Beyond were rolling banks, and beyond those, wooded hills rising terrace over terrace to the dawn.  Many a sunrise was to come to me over those hills.  Oaks and pines and sumach gathered to my doorway.

In my mind I saw the garden we afterward created; with many fruit trees, beds, and winding walks, trellised seats, squares of flaming tulips, phlox, hollyhocks, roses.  It should reach down into the ravine, where humid ferns and rocks met plants that love darkling ground.  Yet it should not be too dark.  I would lop boughs rather than have a growing thing spindle as if rooted in Ste. Pelagie!—­and no man who loves trees can do that without feeling the knife at his heart.  What is long developing is precious like the immortal part of us.

The stoicism that comes of endurance has something of death in it.  I prepared a home without thought of putting any wife therein.  I had grown used to being alone, with the exception of Skenedonk’s taciturn company.  The house was for castle and resting place after labor.  I took satisfaction in the rude furniture we made for it.  In after years it became filled with rich gifts from the other side of the world, and books that have gladdened my heart.  Yet in its virginhood, before pain or joy or achievement had entered there, before spade struck the ground which was to send up food, my holding on the earth’s surface made me feel prince of a principality.

The men hewed a slab settle, and stationed it before the hearth, a thing of beauty in its rough and lichen-tinted barks, though you may not believe it.  My floors I would have smooth and neatly joined, of hard woods which give forth a shining for wear and polish.  Stools I had, easily made, and one large round of a tree for my table, like an Eastern tabouret.

Before the river closed and winter shut in, Skenedonk and I went back to Green Bay.  I did not know how to form my household, and had it in mind to consult Madame Ursule.  Pawnees could be had:  and many French landholders in the territory owned black slaves.  Pierre Grignon himself kept one little negro like a monkey among the stately Indians.