“Just look, Hayes, there’s pioneer blood in them yet—­and brawn, too,” he added, as Tolly and Pink and Billy Robertson stripped off their coats and came forward as Sam knocked the last crimson cedar chip from the last log.

“Steady—­up now, Tolly,” said Sam, as Tolly bent to one end of one of the long, rough cedar logs, that had so lately been a forest king, but that was now dethroned and shorn of its branching power with which to wrestle with the wind.  Pink and Billy got holds in between.  “Up—­up, boys!  Now roll!” shouted Sam again, and with a strain and a heave they landed the first log level and true on the stone underpinnings.

“Hip—­hip—­hurrah for the poet’s house!” shouted Tolly, as he rolled his shirt-sleeves up and spat on his hands to show his readiness for more logs; and we all clapped, while Edith picked up a button that had popped off his shirt with the strain of his big chest underneath.

Then for a second Sam’s kind eyes sank down deep into mine and smoldered there.  I know he was praying for Peter as the rest cheered.  Then he bent and called out: 

“Next.  Up—­up, boys!  Steady!”

My eyes misted for a second, and Peter’s pale face rose before them in the mist.  Peter is a man of dreams, for whom was being harnessed all this sinew and brawn of reality.  And men must plow and plant and reap and hew and lift for their vision-bringers, and women must do it also.  It is only right.  I am willing.  Where were the neighbors to the Keatses that they didn’t—­And I was about to be dissolved in a sea of sentiment when Sam’s voice hauled me to the surface as he shouted: 

“Hi, Betty, get out and sight this end for a right angle-drop, as I showed you.  Wait!  Back, boys!”

And after that I held the metal square and sighted until I felt as if I had eaten a right angle, while Sam’s crew heaved and raised and dropped and rolled, until all four of the low walls were fitted into the notches, log for log, and the roof-poles were laid just as the sun began to quit his job and get on toward China.

“No four of their young Virginia pioneer ancestors who came over the wilderness trail did it any quicker or better, Colonel,” said daddy, as he walked around to the back of the cabin and then again to the front.  As he spoke he laid his arm across Sam’s shoulder—­and I knew that the breach was healed until the next time daddy tried to help him financially.

All the log-raisers went home by twilight, and daddy and I were the last.  The Byrd had insisted on showing daddy nine little curly-tailed pigs taking their evening repast at the maternal fount, which they were shyly late in doing because the fledgling perched so near them on the fence to exhibit and direct the repast.

This left me to help Sam gather up his tools and pick up the fragrant cedar chips for Mammy’s vesper fire.

“Now, the chimney next and Pete’s housed,” said Sam, as he sat down on a log right where I was crouching, filling the basket with the chips.  “Are you happy, Bettykin?”