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Updated: October 25, 2025
He saw his countrymen slaughtered without being able to help them, and it was like a frightful nightmare from which there was to be no awakening. Presently the cry rose: "All is finished!" Then the Indians crowded into Langlade's house and inquired whether any Englishmen were hid there. So thin was the attic floor of planks laid across joists, that Henry could hear every word.
I have heard him tell how his father stood and pointed out the location of the various rooms the room where they slept the first night they went there; the one where the eldest child was born; that in which his mother died. Burroughs on the still remaining joists of his grandfather's house grass-grown, and with the debris of stones and beams mingling with weeds and bushes.
His words flowed gently in the darkness, which they filled with zeal, mercy, and hope; and the neophyte, her hand in that of Ahmes, lulled by the monotonous sounds, and the vague visions in her mind, slept calm and smiling, amid the harmonies of the dark night and the holy mysteries, gazed down on by a star, which twinkled between the joists of the stable-roof.
If they could learn how to build, how rafters and joists are put in, and construct as much as a miniature summer-house in the garden, how useful this being able to turn their hands to anything might prove to them in their after-life. And with what added respect they would look upon all labor if they had never looked upon it as the part of a "gentleman" to stand aloof from it.
It is a wonderful image of the domiciliary conditions of the past cruelly complete; with bended beams and joists, beneath the burden of gables, that seem to ache and groan with memories and regrets. The short low windows, where lead and glass combine equally to create an inward gloom, retain their opacity as a part of the primitive idea of defence.
Nowadays the whole area on which a house is to be raised is covered with cement or with asphalt, and care taken that no timber joists are allowed to touch the earth and thus give entry to the termites. Fortunately, these destructive insects cannot burrow through brick or stone.
The fabric would hardly come together at all, and then only three joists appeared without anything to cover them. This the men seemed to consider un fait accompli, and sat down to smoke.
There were bed-clothes on the bed; and on the walls there still hung long strips of cloth, upon which three riders named Kasper, Melchior, and Baltasar were painted. The same horses and riders were pictured many times. They rode around the whole cabin, and continued their ride even up toward the joists. But in the roof the boy saw something which brought him to his senses in a jiffy.
"The image of devastation and death," as the ancient poet says, "reigned as over a field of battle." Of fifty large sausages, suspended from the joists, scarcely ten remained. Then the lamentations of the host and hostess pierced the vault of the cellar. D'Artagnan himself was moved by them. Athos did not even turn his head. To grief succeeded rage.
For this door revealed a number of bells hanging in silent power in the brown twilight of the place. I entered carefully, for there were only some planks laid upon the joists to keep one's feet from going through the ceiling. In a few moments I had satisfied myself that my conjecture about the keys below was correct. The small iron rods I had seen from beneath hung down from this place.
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