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"An' I'll dance at the weddin' with right good will an' a nimble toe," declared the dealer, vivaciously. "I'll be glad ter see that couple settled. That gal couldn't make up her mind ter let Walter Wyatt go, an' yit no woman in her senses would hev been willin, ter marry him. He war ez unresponsible ez ez fox-fire." "An' ez onstiddy ez a harricane," commented another.
"Why, I thought that was a wild animal that is, a bear, in the path in front of me; what is it?" The man laughed heartily. "The path makes a little bend right there, so it is not in, but beside the path; it is an oak stump on which you have been wasting your lead." "But those glaring eyes " "That is fox-fire, which does look odd in the night-time." "But I heard it growling."
Once or twice a blackberry trailer caught his foot and he lurched heavily, recovering himself with difficulty. Led by the fox-fire of restlessness, he must have tramped far, for the moon went down and curtains of fog began to draw in, obscuring hills and woods in a wet and blinding thickness.
Except I wonder if ever a firefly has hastened downward toward the strange glow which we sometimes see in the heart of decayed wood, mistaking a patch of fox-fire for the love-light of which he was in search! In other species, including the common one about our homes, the lady lightning-bug is more fortunate in possessing wings and is able to fly abroad like her mate.
AS soon as we reckoned everybody was asleep that night we went down the lightning-rod, and shut ourselves up in the lean-to, and got out our pile of fox-fire, and went to work. We cleared everything out of the way, about four or five foot along the middle of the bottom log.
For when we say bug, or for that matter bogy or bugbear, we are garbling the sound which our very, very forefathers uttered when they saw a specter or hobgoblin. They said it bugge or even bwg, but then they were more afraid of specters in those days than we, who imprison will-o'-the-wisps in Very lights, and rub fox-fire on our watch faces.
Along during the morning I borrowed a sheet and a white shirt off of the clothes-line; and I found an old sack and put them in it, and we went down and got the fox-fire, and put that in too. I called it borrowing, because that was what pap always called it; but Tom said it warn't borrowing, it was stealing.
At the foot of the mountain was a river, white and cold and still; and beyond it was a smooth and barren plain, lying silent and lonely in the pale moonlight. But in the distance was seen a circle of flickering flames, ever changing, now growing brighter, now fading away, and now shining with a dull, cold light, like the glimmer of the glow-worm or the fox-fire.
The "fox-fire," rotting logs glowing with a faint luminosity, startled her several times, and the hooting-owl's shuddering bass hoo! hoo! hoo-oo-ah-h! Under ordinary circumstances, she surely would not have started at the rustling made by the timid hare in the thicket near by.
Along during the morning I borrowed a sheet and a white shirt off of the clothes-line; and I found an old sack and put them in it, and we went down and got the fox-fire, and put that in too. I called it borrowing, because that was what pap always called it; but Tom said it warn't borrowing, it was stealing.
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