"Well, you follow that road about two mile and a half, and you'll come to Fitz-Adams's Camp."
The road was the roughest that I had so far travelled. It cut its way along the sheer side of the mountain, following the course of the run. Presently I came to a small log cabin, where, in a little yard beside it, a cow was munching straw, and in front, a fat sow wallowed in a pool in the middle of the road. An old Irishman, who sat on the door-step, told me that I was not half a mile from the camp.
There was a stout log dam on the run a little farther up, but the gates were open and only a slender stream flowed through the muddy bottom, for the dam was undergoing repairs. Near by was a cabin large enough for a score of lumbermen.
The sun had sunk behind the mountain a good half hour before; not even the trees on the summits were lighted up with its setting rays, and the still, clear air bit you with a sudden chill. All the confidence which I had felt in the morning was gone; it was a very tired and hungry, a sobered and a chastened proletaire, that at length caught sight, in the gloom, of Fitz-Adams's Camp.
It stood in a clearing like the camp of Wolf's Run. On the highest area was a long, stout log cabin, to which there was given an added air of security by an earth embankment, which sloped from the ground to the lower logs all around the building, as a means of preventing the air from sweeping under the floors. A door was in the end of the cabin nearest me, and a window was cut in the boarded gable above. A wooden block served as a step to the door, and near this a grindstone swung in its frame. On the outer walls of the cabin were tacked some half dozen advertisements on tin, bidding you, in black letters on an orange background, "Chew——Cut." Over a rough bridge that crossed the run near the cabin, I could faintly see one or two other smaller buildings like it, which proved to be the blacksmith's shop, and the stable for the teamsters' horses. The mountain-road continued its course past the main cabin, and disappeared among the trees in the gorge. So narrow was the ravine, that the mountain rose abruptly from one side of the cabin, and in much the same manner from the bank of the run on the opposite side, leaving a valley scarcely thirty yards in width. The larger timber had been cut away, but the mountain-sides, all about the clearing and the road, were dense with poplar, and white-barked birch and chestnut, and the younger growths of evergreen.
There was perfect quiet in the camp; not a living thing was to be seen or heard. I went up to the nearest door, and knocked. There was no answer. I knocked again, and still there was no answer. At the side, far to the rear, I found another door, and knocked there. It opened instantly, and in the twilight I could faintly see a young woman in a dark print dress.
"Is this Fitz-Adams's Camp?"
"Yes."
"Is Mr. Fitz-Adams here?"
And then in louder voice over her shoulder into the darkness behind her: