“Have you thought of any other plan than that already spoken of?”
I put the question, fancying from his manner that something else had suggested itself to him.
“I hev, cap’n. There’s jest a chance that I know whar them craped gentlemen air at this very minute—jest a chance of thar bein’ thar.”
The last words were spoken slowly, and in a sort of meditative soliloquy.
“Where? Of what place are you speaking?”
“A queery place; and ye wouldn’t know whar it is if I war to tell ye. To understan the lie o’ that shanty, ye’d hev to see it for yourself; which not many ever do, ceptin’ them as have got bizness thar—an’ they ain’t sech as air honest.”
“A shanty—there’s a house? Some solitary dwelling, I suppose?”
“Ye may well call it that, cap’n. It sartinly are the most solitariest dwellin’ I ever seed; an’ what any man ked iver a built it for, beats my recknin’—as I b’lieve it do that o’ most others as hev specklated upon it. Lies up thar.”
I looked in the direction indicated by his gesture. Several dark lists seamed the side of the mountain—at the foot of which we had come to a halt. One of them looked deeper and more cavernous than the rest; though all seemed to trend towards the summit of the slope.
The mountain itself went up with a gradual acclivity; its sides forest-covered—except here and there, where the naked porphyry peeped out through the dark green drapery of the pines.