“Well, we must go up quietly till we can see our company,” said my mate. “We don’t want to drop on a gang of freebooters, who’ll ease us of the dust, and then leave us with a bullet through our heads, as a parting gift.”
‘After this, we rode forward in silence for what seemed a quarter of a mile; but we went at a foot’s pace, on account of picking our way among the rocks that lay thick in the road. Then, as we turned a sharp corner, we saw all at once that the light came not from a camp-fire, but from a house!
“Well,” says I, “in all the years I’ve worked in these parts, man and boy, and tramped from claim to claim, I’ve never heard that there was hut or shanty in this place.”
“Nor I neither,” returns Vermudyn; “but perhaps it’s a new spec; though what folks could want with a house where there’s neither gold to find nor land to farm is more than I can tell. We may thank our luck we’ve tumbled across it.”
‘He jumped off his horse as we drew rein at the door of the queerest old house I ever saw. It was a tumble-down sort of a place, half-stone, half-wood; and the woodwork was fast going to decay, though we could see plainly enough that time and money had once been spent over it. The stone was pretty rough; but the house was all pointed gable-ends and queer-shaped long windows. The high-peaked overhanging roof and the diamond panes reminded me of houses I’d seen in England when I was a young un. The pointed gables were faced with carved oak; and heavy oaken beams, black with age, formed the framework of the upper stories; while the spaces between were roughcast with shingle and plaster. The wickedest old faces were grinning and leering at us from the carvings above the windows; and we could see the whole place, every stick and stone about it, as plain as daylight. We had been riding in darkness through the Devil’s Panniken, a darkness that grew blacker as we went on; and the light from this house fairly dazed us at first. Every window flamed as though there were jolly fires in each room, and hundreds of candles. The place seemed all aflame inside and out; the walls were as bright as if the moon was shining her clearest and strongest full on the house; yet,’ said Old Grizzly, dropping his voice impressively, ‘there was no moon at all that night! We stopped and looked at one another in wonder, and then stared at the house again. We could hear sounds inside now quite plain, men’s voices, and women’s too. Ugly sounds besides, that I couldn’t understand; such howling and shrieking as though all Bedlam were let loose inside—wailing like some creature in pain, and roars of mocking laughter. I turned deadly cold, and shivered as if it were midwinter.
“For mercy’s sake, let’s get away from this madhouse—if it’s not something worse!” said I. “All’s not right here; and I’d go afoot all night before I’d rest in that place.”
“Nonsense!” returned Vermudyn in his impetuous way. “I’m going in, anyhow; and you’ll stop to see fair-play, I know.”
‘The upshot of it was he seized my arm and led me into the house; while a gipsy-looking fellow came out for our horses, after we’d unloaded our knapsacks and blankets. My gold was sewed in a belt round my body, and I determined to fight hard for dear life, if need be; whilst I was equally determined to see Vermudyn through the night’s adventure, as far as it lay in my power.
‘If the outside of the house was strange to us, the inside was still stranger. The furniture appeared to be hundreds of years old. The presses, chairs, and tables were all of polished black oak, which reflected the light of many candles; while a big fire roared in the open fireplace, near which a table was laid for supper, and everything on it matched all we’d already seen. There were drinking-horns mounted in silver; cups of the same; such a load of plate as I’d never seen in my life, and such as, I was pretty certain, belonged to no country inn in a wild district where the only travellers were miners, and the only natives Injuns. On the top of a carved press in one corner there was a fine show of bottles—long-necked, slender flasks, crusted over with age and cobwebs; and short squat bottles, that held hollands and Kirschwasser, Vermudyn told me.
‘Well, while we took stock of the room and its contents, there wasn’t a soul to be seen, yet the noise and hubbub continued still all around us; the clatter of a hundred voices rising and falling far and near like the wind. Laughter, screams, and low moans all together, or following each other quickly. The longer I listened, the less I liked it; yet, as I sat in a corner of the big chimney, I seemed to grow drowsy and stupid-like, as if I had no power of my limbs or my voice. I think I couldn’t have walked a dozen steps for a thousand pounds; yet I could still hear and see all, through a light mist that fell betwixt me and everything I looked at.