Volume Two—Chapter Six.
The domicile of Dick Dancey could scarce with correctness be called a house. Even cottage would be too dignified a name for the wooden hovel, in which the woodman and his family habitually found shelter from rain and wind.
To the latter the house itself was but little exposed: for, when a tempest raged, before striking on the frail structure, its fury was expended upon the giant beeches of Wapsey’s Wood, that stretched their protecting arms over and around it.
It was a cabin of rough logs, clayed between the chinks, and roofed with a thatch of rushes—such, excepting the roof, as might be seen at the present day in the backwoods of America.
A narrow doorway, barely wide enough to admit the big body of the woodman himself; two or three small windows, with diminutive panes of glass set in lead; an enclosure of limited dimensions, girt with a flimsy paling—designed for a garden, but grown into a weed bed; a stack of fire faggots; a shed that gave occasional shelter to a scraggy cob; a clay-bedaubed kennel containing a large fierce-looking mongrel—the cross between sheep-dog and deer-hound; these were the principal features in the external aspect of Dick Dancey’s domicile.
The interior view was equally rude, and equally simple. A kitchen with a clay floor, and clay-plastered walls—against which stood upon shelves, or hung upon pegs, a sparse collection of utensils; some dingy old prints on common paper, and in cheap frames; a string of onions; another of rabbit skins; and close by the freshly-flayed hide of a fallow deer. Traps, gins, nets, and other implements for taking forest game and fish, were visible in a corner by themselves; and in another corner lay a large wooden axe, the implement of the owner’s proper calling. On the floor stood a beechwood table, with half-a-dozen rush-bottomed chairs, and some culinary utensils of red earthenware; while in the cavity, representing a fire-place, two large stones did duty for andirons.
The kitchen was everything—the two rooms, the only others in the house—were both bedchambers; and both of very limited divisions. Each contained only a single bed; but one of the rooms was furnished a little better than its fellow:—that is, the bed had sheets and a coverlet; while the other was only a shakedown of straw rushes, with some rags of coarse grogram, and a couple of deer-skins for bed-clothes.
In the first chamber there was a chair or two, and a small table placed against the wait. Over this glistened a piece of broken mirror, attached to the plastered surface, by a couple of rusty nails bent against the edges of the glass. A cotton pincushion; two or three common side-combs for holding up the hair; a small brush of bristles; a pair of white linen cuffs, that showed signs of having been more than once worn since washing; with some minor articles of female apparel, all lying upon the table, told the occupant of the chamber to be a woman.
It was the sleeping-room of Bet Dancey—the daughter of the deer-stalker, and the only member of his family. The other apartment was the dormitory of Dick himself.
The bed-rooms, however, were of inferior importance: since both Dick and his daughter lived habitually in the kitchen. They were both to be found there on the fourth day after the fête, at which the beautiful Betsey had cut such a conspicuous figure.