`` Well , Mr. Peter ! '' cried Tabitha , on the garret stairs . `` Have you torn the house down enough to heat the teakettle ? '' `` Not yet , old Tabby , '' answered Peter , `` but that 's soon done , as you shall see . '' With the word in his mouth , he uplifted the axe , and laid about him so vigorously that the dust flew , the boards crashed , and in a twinkling the old woman had an apron full of broken rubbish . `` We shall get our winter 's wood cheap , '' quoth Tabitha . The good work being thus commenced , Peter beat down all before him , smiting and hewing at the joints and timbers , unclenching spike-nails , ripping and tearing away boards , with a tremendous racket from morning till night . He took care , however , to leave the outside shell of the house untouched , so that the neighbors might not suspect what was going on . Never , in any of his vagaries , though each had made him happy while it lasted , had Peter been happier than now . Perhaps , after all , there was something in Peter Goldthwaite 's turn of mind which brought him an inward recompense for all the external evil that it caused . If he were poor , ill-clad , even hungry and exposed , as it were , to be utterly annihilated by a precipice of impending ruin , yet only his body remained in these miserable circumstances , while his aspiring soul enjoyed the sunshine of a bright futurity . It was his nature to be always young , and the tendency of his mode of life to keep him so . Gray hairs were nothing -- no , nor wrinkles nor infirmity ; he might look old , indeed , and be somewhat disagreeably connected with a gaunt old figure much the worse for wear , but the true , the essential Peter was a young man of high hopes just entering on the world . At the kindling of each new fire his burnt-out youth rose afresh from the old embers and ashes . It rose exulting now . Having lived thus long -- not too long , but just to the right age -- a susceptible bachelor with warm and tender dreams , he resolved , so soon as the hidden gold should flash to light , to go a-wooing and win the love of the fairest maid in town . What heart could resist him ? Happy Peter Goldthwaite ! Every evening -- as Peter had long absented himself from his former lounging-places at insurance offices , news-rooms , and book-stores , and as the honor of his company was seldom requested in private circles -- he and Tabitha used to sit down sociably by the kitchen hearth . This was always heaped plentifully with the rubbish of his day 's labor .
As the foundation of the fire there would be a goodly-sized back-log of red oak , which after XXXXX sheltered from rain or damp above a century still hissed with the heat and distilled streams of water from each end , as if the tree had been cut down within a week or two .
Have being brought commenced entering heaped made requested ripping unclenching