“Yo he! yo ho!” sung Mark, further away, and the echoes of his boyish voice still rang vibrant and clear.
Then there was no sound but the stir of the river and the clang of the iron-shod hoofs of Cockleburr, striking the stones in the rocky bridle-path. The flint gave out a flash of light, the yellow spark glimmering for an instant, visible in the purple dusk with a transitory flicker like a firefly.
And old Joel Ruggles once more shook his head.
CHAPTER II
Far away in a dim recess of the deep woods, on the summit of the ridge, amidst crags and chasms and almost inaccessible steeps, the shadows had gathered about a dismal little log hut of one room—like all the other dismal little hovels of the mountain, save that in front of the door the grass was worn away from a wide space by the frequent tread of many feet; a preternaturally large wood-pile was visible under a frail shelter in the rear of the house; from the chimney a dense smoke rose in a heavy column; and the winds that rushed past it carried on their breath an alcoholic aroma. But for these points of dissimilarity and its peculiarly secluded situation, Mark Yates, dismounting from his restive steed, might have been entering his mother’s dwelling. The opening door shed no glare of firelight out into the deepening gloom of the dusk. It was very warm within, however—almost too warm for comfort; but the shutters of the glassless window were tightly barred, and the usual chinks of log-house architecture were effectually closed with clay. The darkness of the room was accented rather than dispelled by a flickering tallow dip stuck in an empty bottle in default of a candlestick, and there was an all-pervading and potent odor of spirits. The salient feature of the scene was a stone furnace, from the closed door of which there flashed now and then a slender thread of brilliant light. A great copper still rose from it, and a protruding spiral tube gracefully meandered away in the darkness through the cool waters of the refrigerator to the receiver of its precious condensed vapors.
There were four jeans-clad mountaineers seated in the gloomy twilight of this apartment; and the stories of “bar-huntin’ an’ sech” must have been very jewels of discourse to prove so alluring, as they could certainly derive no brilliancy from their unique but somber setting.
“Hy’re, Mark! Come in, come in,” was the hospitable insistence which greeted young Yates.
“Hev a cheer,” said Aaron Brice, the eldest of the party, bringing out from the darkness a chair and placing it in the feeble twinkle of the tallow dip.