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It is a large house, and has been growing steadily for some centuries round the great kitchen, with its narrow red tiles, as the Rector would point out to his guests on the first night of their arrival, taking his brass candlestick, and bidding them mind the steps up and the steps down, and notice the immense thickness of the walls, the old beams across the ceiling, the staircases as steep as ladders, and the attics, with their deep, tent-like roofs, in which swallows bred, and once a white owl.
Over this was stretched a covering of buffalo-skins, very neatly sewed together with thin strips of leather, and secured so firmly at the foot with pegs, that it was as tight as a drum, and capable of throwing off any amount of rain, or the snow melting from the heat within. The hides, being tanned white, had a very neat and tent-like look.
The cattle, moving restlessly about and jabbing their long, wicked horns at any animal that got in the way, lifted heads to stare at them suspiciously, before they turned tail and scampered off through the mustard. From the live oak under which they had been gathered came a welcoming shout, and the two, riding under the tent-like branches, craned necks in astonishment.
He gave vent to a little cry of joy, which had in it something child-like and pathetic, and pushed open the door and entered. It was nothing but a tiny, unfinished shack, with one room and a small one opening from it. There was no ceiling; overhead was the tent-like slant of the roof, but it was tight. The dusty floor was quite dry. There was one rickety chair.
"Stand on my left hand, a little back," he said, "ready to interpret." The Sheikh bowed reverently and took his place, while to Frank the scene in the gloomy, tent-like room resembled some great picture of Eastern life that he had once seen.
This wall was connected with a chapel that was still building, and bordered on the garden of a neighboring house. The sewing-girl, at one of the windows on the ground floor of this house a grated window, still more remarkable by the sort of tent-like awning above it beheld a young female, with her eyes fixed upon the convent, making signs with her hand, at once encouraging and affectionate.
The first of the seven or eight tent-like hills that were to the east of our route to-day presents a somewhat remarkable appearance. Of a conical form, it comes to a point like a Chinaman's hat, and is encircled near the top by a black ring, while some rocks resembling a white tower crown the summit. Distance to-day, twenty miles. Sunday, 27th June, Large Water Creek.
The line of this ditch is now marked by a fringe of trees; but in 1855, nothing broke the surface of the sea of grass except a few clumps of plum trees and willows at the foot of the opposite slope, and here and there along the line of the present ditch, there were ponds of open water, patches of cattails, and the tent-like roofs of muskrat-houses.
This, at least, was the impression I derived from my first acquaintance with them, as I found myself steering for the extremity of some low downs about six miles distant. I thought these downs would never get nearer. At length I saw a tent-like object, dotting itself upon the plain, with eight black mice as it were in front of it.
Salmon had appropriated this same room to his especial use; his bed, which in the French taste was covered with a tent-like tester, occupied one nook, and the curtains, as well as the floor-cloth, were of very rich, but tarnished and threadbare materials.