A moment after the hail was heard from the roof, the muffled noise which accompanied it ceased. The stranger groping about in the snowy gloom had stepped off the roof into the huge drift outside the Heavenly Bower, and a minute later, lifted the latch of the door and pushed in among the astonished miners. They saw the figure of a sturdy man holding something in his arms, so wrapped round with blankets and coverings that no one could tell its nature. He stamped the snow from his boots, shook himself like a shaggy dog, then walked heavily to the chair which Budge Isham placed near the fire for him, and almost fell into it.
“Good evening, friends,” he said in a grave voice; “It was no fault of mine that I tried at first to enter by the roof.”
“When I built the Heavenly Bower,” replied Landlord Ortigies; “I meant to place a door up there, but there wasn’t anybody in New Constantinople with enough sense to know how to do it. I ’spose you was looking fur it, stranger.”
“No,” was the reply, “I wasn’t looking for anything; I was just walking, walking through the storm, not knowing or caring where I went. I can’t say how far I came, but it must have been a number of miles. I was still plodding on, when I set my foot on vacancy and down I went.”
“Gracious! you fell nearly a hundred feet,” said Parson Brush; “it was a wonderful providence that saved you from being dashed to death.”
“The snow on the roof must be five or six feet deep,” replied the stranger; “for it received me as if it were a feather bed. I saw a glow from the top of your chimney against the rocks and knew I was on the roof of a house. I hardly felt jarred and groped my way off into a lot more snow and here I am.”
The astonishment of the listeners did not make them forget the laws of hospitality. Budge Isham looked significantly at the landlord, but he had already drawn a glass of spirits and was coming from behind the bar with it.
“Stranger, swallow this; you look cold; you’re welcome to the Heavenly Bower, whether you come through the roof or down the chimbley.”
“Thank you; I’ll take the whiskey in a minute.”