"It's open still, and is clean, and has excellent, good beds. There's cookery to be had in that place the like of which you seldom come upon; and as for its spirits and malt liquors, well, sir, they are rare, indeed!"
The place where Anthony had stopped was on the shoulder of a hill; night was now lowering over the desolate winter landscape with its bare fields, stunted trees, and ice-filled marsh. The wood-cutter pointed in the direction of the river.
"Do you see that road winding along there?" asked he. "And there, in a hollow near it, a clump of cedars?"
"I do," said Anthony. "And I also see something rising up from among the trees like the mast of a ship."
"It is one," said the man, "and with a topmast and rigging all complete, just as it would be if it were stepped in a vessel instead of the dooryard of the Brig Tavern."
Anthony looked at the mast for a moment, then turned his eyes upon the man.
"When I inquired about an inn," said he, "you spoke of an indifferent one a long way off, but made no mention of this excellent one so close at hand."
The wood-cutter grasped the haft of his ax and plucked its blade out of the log.
"The Brig is so off the road," said he, "I thought you'd not care to go there."
There was a look in the man's face that gave a different story; but Anthony did not stay to go further into the matter; he thanked him, turned his horses back to the road, and proceeded on. In a little while he came to the place where the winding road crossed the main one; taking to this he journeyed on toward the tavern. The winter twilight had grown thicker; and ahead in the hollow where the cedars grew, night had already thrown itself down. There was a dull glow from the inn; it served to light the way through the trees, and as Anthony's sleigh drew up a man came out of a barn with a lantern.