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We now approach larger rocky islands, and the huge, grey, broken rocks of the main land, where dwarfish pine woods grow in a continual combat with the blast; the Skjärgaards sometimes become only a narrow canal, sometimes an extensive lake strewed with small islets, all of stone, and often only a mere block of stone, to which a single little fir-tree clings fast: screaming sea-gulls flutter around the land-marks that are set up; and now we see a single farm-house, whose red-painted sides shine forth from the dark background.
To say nothing of the picturesque, sometimes you get sight of comfort, sometimes of opulence, through the unlatched wicket in some porte-cochère red-painted brick pavement, foliage of dark palm or pale banana, marble or granite masonry and blooming parterres; or through a chink between some pair of heavy batten window-shutters, opened with an almost reptile wariness, your eye gets a glimpse of lace and brocade upholstery, silver and bronze, and much similar rich antiquity.
But they have never sat in the smoky, red-painted blacksmith shop or among the patriarchs and town wits who in summer keep open-air sessions on the wide, inviting platform in front of Uncle Tony's hardware store, and in winter hold profound meetings around the store's big, glowing stove. Uncle Tony's is the most social spot in town and is from a news-gathering point of view most ideally situated.
Temple and our artist were shown into a double-bedded room. "Is that a bed?" said Sam, pointing to a red-painted wooden box in a corner; "why, it's too short even for me, and you know I'm not a giant." "Oh! then what must it be for me?" groaned Fred Temple.
At this moment Dominic supposed himself indifferent in the matter, since he believed not presumptuously, but through the outreaching of a great faith that the end was certain. And meditating, just now, upon that gracious conviction, while the red-painted half-empty omnibus fared onward down Piccadilly, a sense of the unusual graciousness of things immediate and visible took hold on him.
Little traffic passes over the drifted trails now; a horseman upon a social visit bent, a bobsleigh loaded with cord-wood for the wood-stoves at home, a cutter, drawn by a rattling team of young bronchos, as rancher and wife seek the alluring stores of some distant city to make their household purchases, even an occasional "jumper," one of those low-built, red-painted, one-horsed sleighs, which resemble nothing so much as a packing-case with a pair of shafts attached.
He then had no horse nor carriole, no fur coat nor red-painted luncheon-basket. He had to go on foot from house to house and carry his belongings tied in a blue striped cotton handkerchief.
The other was a plain red-painted, tapering pine-pole which she said, when it fell to the ground, would tell of the death of some one related to an inmate of the house. Should it lean towards the house it foretold misfortune; or if she were any time away, when she was returning she would send her Mullee Mullee to sit on the top and bend it just to let us know.
The great saw mill, with its tall stacks and its row of water-barrels protection against fire on top, was the dominant note. Near the mill crouched a little red-painted structure from whose stovepipe a column of white smoke rose, attesting the cold, a clear hundred feet straight upward, and to whose door a number of men were directing their steps through the snow.
Still the guardian star in the night sky beamed compassionately down upon the little tepee on the plain. In the afternoon shadow of a large tepee, with red-painted smoke lapels, sat a warrior father with crossed shins. His head was so poised that his eye swept easily the vast level land to the eastern horizon line. He was the chieftain's bravest warrior.
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