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Gowanlock, of the firm of Gowanlock & Laurie, who had a large saw and grist mill in course of erection; creeping stealthily along, and concealing their approach by walking among the trees they were within forty yards of the house without being perceived. Then Mrs. Gowanlock, a young woman, recently married, walked out of the house, and gathering some kindling-wood in her apron, returned again.
In the first there is a kind of bin for ashes and coals, and there are pots and grills lying about it is the kitchen. A heap of fire kindling-wood in one corner, a bench or stool as black as soot can paint it, a few bowls, a few bits of rags, a few fragments of food, and a coolie squatting over a struggling fire, a coolie who rises out of the dim smoke like the evil genii in the Arabian tale.
Each of the convicts who were to act in concert with him piled up a lot of kindling in their respective shops and saturated it with kerosene. When the prisoners were being marched out to supper, they threw matches into the piles of kindling-wood, and soon several buildings were on fire. Intense excitement now prevailed among the two thousand convicts.
An old pine stump was on the bank not far away; he might cut kindling-wood from that to start his fire, and he reached for his knife. Alas! its case was empty. Had Rolf been four years younger, he might have broken down and wept at this. It did seem such an unnecessary accumulation of disasters. Without gun or knife, how was he to call his friends?
A solitary old sycamore, leaning over the water on the Kentucky shore, a mile away, was first to fall. In the lurid darkness, August and Julia saw it meet its fate. Then the rail fences on the nearer bank were scattered like kindling-wood, and some of the sturdy old apple-trees of the orchard in the river-bottom were uprooted, while others were stripped of their boughs.
Here, you may see, the savages will know where to aim every shot; and it would be too much to hope that some would not find their way through the crevices of the logs. Now, on the other hand, we should have nothing but a forest to aim at. Then we are not safe from fire, here, the bark of this roof being little better than so much kindling-wood.
"I'll use it for kindling-wood first," was her answer, and Stephen resumed his cogitations, which resulted finally in his telling her, that on the prairies of Illinois there were a few acres of land, of which he was the rightful owner.
So as soon as he got near enough he carried out his plan. That young man did not go to his office that morning, and the fragments of his canoe was picked up by a poor family and used for kindling-wood. Now," she added, looking deliberately at Jonas, "if you can find a good moral to that story we'd be glad to hear it."
The children of the property at any rate thought it was grand, and picked out the last remains of panelling for kindling-wood, and would sit calling to one another for hours from the high ledges above the brick pillars, upon which there had once stood busts of famous men. Now and again a party of Russian or Polish emigrants hired the room and took possession of it for a few nights.
Suddenly, with the thunder of pent-up waters at last unleashed, the dam breaks, and the structures placed in the path by complacent and self-satisfied man are swept on to the sea like so much kindling-wood. The river, at last, has come into its own, A feeling, long controlled, must eventually break its bonds. Forbidden expression, and not spent by expression, it accumulates force.
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