They reached home in good time for dinner.
The afternoon was employed by Mark Sutherland in collecting together necessary provisions, to be taken with their furniture to the cabin; and by Rosalie—seated by the window of her part of the upper chamber—in hemming napkins, preparatory to her housekeeping, and in looking out upon the prairie basking in the afternoon sun, and upon her distant home, Wolf’s Grove.
In the evening the hunters returned from an unsuccessful expedition; and fatigued and mortified, and inclined to be silent upon the subject of their defeated enterprise, they gathered around the supper-table. But the curiosity of the hostess, and the perseverance of the host, at last elicited from them the fact that they had not even hit upon the track of the wolves.
The next day was fixed upon by Mark Sutherland and his wife for their removal to Wolf’s Grove.
CHAPTER XXI.
GOING TO HOUSEKEEPING.
All the forenoon of the next day, Mr. Garner, the landlord, was absent with his team; so that our young people were obliged to defer their removal until the afternoon; and they spent the intervening hours in reviewing their possessions and supplying those few last articles that always are forgotten in a first preparation.
At two o’clock, the capacious wagon of the hotel stood before the door, laden with furniture, trunks, provisions, and so forth. A tolerable seat was arranged for Rosalie among the baggage; but Mark, on foot, accompanied the landlord, who walked at the head of his horses. It was a slow progress; the horses, already fatigued with their morning’s work, never got out of a walk; so that it was nearly four o’clock when they entered Wolf’s Grove and drew up before the log cabin. While his horses were resting, Mr. Garner assisted Mark to unlade the wagon, and take in the furniture and arrange the heaviest part of it. Then, having watered his horses, he shook hands with his late guests, wished them good luck, jumped upon his seat in front of the wagon, and drove off.
And Mark and Rosalie found themselves standing, looking at each other, alone, in the forest cabin. It was a moment in which flashed back upon each the memory of their whole past lives, and the intense realization of their present position. A doubt, whether to weep or smile, quivered over Rosalie’s features for an instant. Mark saw the tremor of her lips and eyelids, and drew her to his heart; and she dropped her head upon his shoulder and smiled through her tears. He whispered, cheerily—
“Never mind, dear; you will be one of the honoured pioneer women of the West. And when this wilderness is a great Commonwealth, and Shelton is a great city, and I am an old patriarch, we will have much joy in telling of the log cabin in the wilderness, where we first went to housekeeping. And now, let us see if we cannot get this place into a little order.”
The room, as I said, was large and square, with a window east and west, facing each other, and a stone fire-place north, facing a broad door south. The walls were unplastered, but well planed and cemented, and grey with time and use. The floor was of rough but sound pine plank. A broad shelf over the fire-place served for a mantel-piece. In the corner between the east window and the fire-place stood the step-ladder leading to the loft. In the opposite corner, between the west window and the fire-place, were three triangular shelves, that did duty as cupboard or beaufet. Finally, the sashes of the windows were good, but the glass was all broken out of them. This was the state of the room when Mark and Rosalie looked around it. Mark went up the step-ladder to examine the loft, but found it so low that even a woman could not stand upright in it. It was therefore given up, except as a place to stow trunks, boxes, &c.