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The valley between was sunk in darkness. The scene within, upon which Emily turned on the opening of the door, was scarcely less gloomy. The old servant, who had received them at the gates, now entered, bending under a load of pine-branches, while two of Montoni's Venetian servants followed with lights.
We soon saw to what use they were put, for at every cross-road or railway bridge a warm sentry-box of mud and straw and plaited pine-branches was plastered against a bank or tucked like a swallow's nest into a sheltered corner. A little farther on we began to come more and more frequently on big colonies of "Seventy-fives."
Without saying a word the owner of this strange abode went towards these, and, blowing them into a flame, heaped large logs upon them, so that, in ten minutes, the place was brilliantly illuminated with a ruddy blaze that did one's heart good to look upon. By the light of the fire March perceived that he had been deposited on a couch of pine-branches.
The deer had gone down to the lower ground at the first sign of coming winter, and the coyotes and the wolves had followed to spend the cold months in the foot-hills and on the plains about the haunts of man. The woodchucks were already asleep below-ground, and of the birds only the woodpeckers and the crossbills, and some smaller birds fluttering among the pine-branches, remained.
Whatever may have been his secret thoughts, however, he carefully concealed them from every one, and always referred to his complaint as, "this nasty stiff feeling about the legs which iss a long time of goin' away whatever." In a few days, Fergus returned from the plains, bringing his brother in a cart, which had been made tolerably easy by means of a springy couch of pine-branches.
Everywhere else the ground was bare; but beneath the sharp pine-branches lay snow that had been melting and freezing, melting and freezing, until it was hard as ice. The boy thought he had struck an arctic wilderness, and he was so miserable that he wanted to scream. He was hungry too. He hadn't eaten a bite the whole day. But where should he find any food?
In the mouth of the cave within its shelter, yet where he could see out freely, and so have constantly in his mind the comforting thought of his deliverance we made a bed for him of soft pine-branches, which some near-by trees gave us; and we took care that this couch should be so thick and so evenly laid that he would lie easily upon it; for we knew that many days, perhaps even weeks, must pass before we could venture to put so heavy a strain upon his strength as would come when we carried him down that rough mountain-side, and so began our journey towards home.
That Kurdish tent, as far as we were concerned, was a veritable palace, although we were almost blinded by the smoke from the green pine-branches on the smoldering fire. We said that the chief invited us to a cup of tea: so he did—but we provided the tea; and that, too, not only for our own party, but for half a dozen of the chief’s personal friends.
Both right and left of the screen, pine-branches resembling Christmas-trees of to-day were stuck into the floor. This strange decoration expresses symbolically a meaning similar to that intended to be conveyed by the dance of the ayash tyucotz.
In the only account given of one of these feasts, we read that the people brought olive-branches and pine-branches, myrtle-branches and palm-branches, and made themselves booths upon the roofs of their houses, in their courts, and in their streets, and dwelt in them, 'and there was very great gladness. Imagine such a scene on these mountain-slopes and foot-hills, under these cloudless skies; the sombre, evergreen boughs interwoven with the brightly colored foliage from the lowlands; this mellow, golden sunlight by day alternating with the white, mystical radiance of the harvest moon by night."
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