TAKING REINS IN HAND. 83 



the right ; on the left, and beyond the red tenant 

 house with its clustering lilacs, and shading maples, 

 is a mossy orchard ; and with the mossy orchard on 

 the left, and the sudden hills piling to the right, the 

 border of the land is reached. 



The wooden farmhouse, which lay so quietly 

 under the trees, at the foot of the hill, when I first 

 saw the place, is long since burned and gone. It was 

 the old story of ashes in a wooden kit very lively 

 ashes, that one night kindled the kit, and thence 

 spread to the shed, and in a moment half the house 

 was in flame. It was a picturesque sight from my 

 window on the hill ; but not a pleasant one. A wild, 

 sweeping, gallant blaze, that wrapped old powder- 

 post timbers in its roar, and licked through crashing 

 Bashes, and came crinkling through the roof in a hun- 

 dred wilful jets, and then lashed and overlaid the 

 whole with a tent of vermilion, above which there 

 streamed into the night great, yellow, swaying pen- 

 nants of flame. But the burnt house is long since 

 replaced by another. It would have been a simple 

 and easy task to restore it as before : a few loads of 

 lumber, the scheme of some country joiner, and the 

 thing were done. But I was anxious to determine by 

 actual trial how far the materials which nature had 

 provided on the farm itself, could be made available. 



The needed timber could, of course, be readily 



