The narrow aperture, as he held the door ajar, showed outlined against the darkness the graceful head of a young mare, and once more hoof-beats resounded on the rotten planks of the porch.
Clouds were adrift in the sky. No star gleamed in the wide space high above the sombre mountains. On every side they encompassed Lonesome Cove, which seemed to have importunately thrust itself into the darkling solemnities of their intimacy.
All at once the ranger let the door fly from his hand, and stood gazing in blank amazement. For there was a strange motion in the void vastnesses of the wilderness. They were creeping into view. How, he could not say, but the summit of the great mountain opposite was marvellously distinct against the sky. He saw the naked, gaunt, December woods. He saw the grim, gray crags. And yet Lonesome Cove below and the spurs on the other side were all benighted. A pale, flickering light was dawning in the clouds; it brightened, faded, glowed again, and their sad, gray folds assumed a vivid vermilion reflection, for there was a fire in the forest below. Only these reactions of color on the clouds betokened its presence and its progress. Sometimes a fluctuation of orange crossed them, then a glancing line of blue, and once more that living red hue which only a pulsating flame can bestow.
“Air it the comin' o' the Jedgmint Day, Tobe?” asked his wife, in a meek whisper.
“I'd be afraid so if I war ez big a sinner ez you-uns,” he returned.
“The woods air afire,” the old woman declared, in a shrill voice.
“They be a-soakin' with las' night's rain,” he retorted, gruffly.
The mare was standing near the porch. Suddenly he mounted her and rode hastily off, without a word of his intention to the staring women in the doorway.
He left freedom of speech behind him. “Take yer bones along, then, ye tongue-tied catamount!” his wife's mother apostrophized him, with all the acrimony of long repression. “Got no mo' politeness 'n a settin' hen,” she muttered, as she turned back into the room.
The young woman lingered wistfully. “I wisht he wouldn't go a-ridin' off that thar way 'thout lettin' we-uns know whar he air bound fur, an' when he'll kern back. He mought git hurt some ways roun' that thar fire—git overtook by it, mebbe.”