Dick had spoken partly in the old Cornish dialect, which they frequently spoke when by themselves.
"Aye, I guess that's the interpretation," said Ande, thoughtfully. The way was pursued in silence for some time, unbroken save by the tramp of horses' feet and the whirring wings of some bird whose solitude was disturbed.
A mile or so was passed over and then through the trees ahead was the gleam of a light, and after a time they rode into Hugh Lark's clearing. The log house, two stories in height, loomed up darkly in the dusk of evening. The moonlight touched up its clap-board roof and the edges of its huge stone chimney, lighting them fantastically, and through the greased paper-paned window came the glow of a fire within, evidently from the great fireplace. There was the baying of a hound, and then the quick bark of a shepherd dog in concert, and then the door opened and the frame of Hugh was outlined against the inner light.
"Get back, you dogs! Back to your kennel, Shep, and you, Jack, over to the barn with you!" he bellowed, and the dogs, that looked most aggressive, slunk off at the word of their master. The horses were soon fastened to the rail fence and the horsemen approached the house to be greeted on the threshold with the outstretched hand of Hugh.
"Come in, mon, come in. It's a cauld nicht, as they ca' it in auld Scotland," and he grasped each man's hand welcomingly and drew them within and up to the great fireplace, for though spring had come, yet the nights were cold. Hugh had greeted them as a Scotchman can. Though a tolerably educated man, yet he loved to drop now and then back into his mother tongue. The pilot's wife, a comely dame but little younger than himself, sat near the light of the fireplace busily spinning. His two chubby children had been put to bed in the room o'erhead and the scene within was that of quiet, home comfort. Bunches of dried herbs and a few hams and flitches of dried bacon and deer meat depended from the rafters of the ceiling. A few common prints adorned the rude white-washed walls and o'er the mantle piece, supported by deer antlers, was an old-time flint-lock rifle of great weight and heavy bore. The pilot introduced his wife, who, having made the customary courtesy, resumed her spinning, the whir, whir of the wheel mingling with the cracking of the fire-logs.
Hugh drew forward two home-made chairs for his visitors, and Ande sat down, but Dick was interested in the great rifle o'er the mantle piece. Hugh noticed his concentrated look on the old rifle.
"Aye, ye are looking at a highly prized relic in that rifle. Test the weight of it, sir; notice the large bore capable of carrying a ball the size of a schoolboy's marble."
Dick took down the gun and examined it.
"That rifle could tell many a tale, Mr. Dick, if it could speak. It was my father's, Captain Ande Lark's gun. Ye ken that captains of sharp-shooters in the days of Washington carried guns. A gun was more use to them then than all of the swords made. Father fired the last shot out of it in 1794, when he was mortally wounded by Indians on the Kiskiminatas. It was this way," said Hugh, seeing the look of interest on the faces of his visitors. "After the Revolution, the nation was heavily indebted, and not even the efforts of Robert Morris could save the nation from financial ruin had not many patriots, among whom was my father, withheld their claims for service. Some speculating jobber offered to trade father a thousand acres of land, where Braddock met his defeat, for the com mission papers and his claims. Father accepted, and loading up his goods on a flat boat he floated down the river Kiskiminatas. He was attacked by lurking savages along the river side and, although he succeeded in bringing down several of them by bullets from 'Old Thump,'"—and the pilot waved his hand expressively toward the old rifle,—"yet he received a wound himself from which he afterward died."
Hugh Lark was silent and his usually pleasant face was sober and sad. There was a long pause, unbroken save by the puffs and clouds of ascending tobacco smoke.