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Although the wind moaned and the snow danced fitfully, within a certain quaint farmhouse in Northern New York was warmth and comfort, all the more apparent by the touch of winter outside. A cheerful fire was crackling in a large kitchen range, suggesting, by its brightness and snapping, pine-knots full of pitch and resin.
With a swing of her arm, she pulled the great oaken door to and dropped the bar into its place. Over the dead she spread a clean white sheet. Into the fire she thrust pine-knots. They glared in vague red, and shadowy brilliance, waving and quivering and throwing up thin swirling columns of black smoke.
In the spacious chimney-corners the children and negroes gathered, telling stories and cracking nuts by the blazing pine-knots, while the industrious vrows turned the merry spinning-wheel, and their lords, the worthy burghers, mayhap just returned from an Indian scrimmage, quietly smoked their long pipes, as they sat watching the wreaths curling above their heads.
The new devices were dismal, such as the vile stuff called terebene, which smoked and smelt more than it illuminated, such as the wax tapers which were coiled round bottles that had seen better days. Many preferred the old way, and read by flickering pine-knots, which cost many an old reader his eyes.
Thinking, however, that she detected a reluctance on the girl's part to remain away from home, she did not repeat her invitation. Cicely, indeed, was filling a double rôle. The learning acquired from Miss Chandler she imparted to John at home. Every evening, by the light of the pine-knots blazing on Needham's ample hearth, she taught John to read the simple words she had learned during the day.
We had succeeded in bringing her to a sort of equilibrium, and were in hopes of being able to force her toward the bank, when all at once we heard a heavy object strike against the stern. At the same moment, the bow rose up into the air, and a number of the burning pine-knots fell back into the bottom of the canoe.
Band after band the tribes gathered, and when the sun went down the war-chief's obsequies took place. It was a strange funeral that they gave Multnomah, yet it was in keeping with the dark, grand life he had lived. A large canoe was filled with pitch and with pine-knots, the most inflammable materials an Oregon forest could furnish.
It was while she stood thus, innocently coquetting with her own delightful picture, that a great plan for the plenishment of her otherwise imperfect wardrobe popped into her active, searching mind. Carefully she considered this, first before the glass and then, with feet crossed and clasped hands between her knees, before the roaring fire of resinous pine-knots in the old fireplace.
They had got nearly dry when Norman returned, and they proceeded to assist in butchering the antelope. The skin was whipped off in a trice; and the venison, cut into steaks and ribs, was soon spitted and sputtering cheerily in the blaze of the pine-knots. Everything looked pleasant and promising, and it only wanted the presence of Basil to make them all feel quite happy again.
A fire of pine-knots near the doorway cast a weird reddish glow over the scene. "Come right on up to the front with me," Dolly said. "There will be a vacant seat or two near the platform. Say, if you laugh at me while I am speaking that is, if I do speak I'll never forgive you never!" There was no chance for a reply. She was already leading him into the crowded room.
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