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"You don't know the lives of these people." Presently they came to an open clearing in the forest, yet so incomplete that many of the felled trees, partly lopped of their boughs, still lay where they had fallen. There was a cabin or dwelling of unplaned, unpainted boards; very simple in structure, yet made in a workmanlike fashion, quite unlike the usual log cabin she had seen.

A little light came down the hatchway, and a smoky lamp or two swung above her head, but half the steerage deck was wrapped in shadow, and out of it there rose a many-voiced complaining. Flimsy, unplaned fittings had wrenched away, and men lay inert amid the wreckage, with the remains of their last meal scattered about them.

But there was neither meadow nor open field; the few acres of ground had been wrested from the forest by axe and fire, and unsightly stumps everywhere marked the rude and difficult attempts at cultivation. Two or three rough buildings of unplaned and unpainted boards, connected by rambling sheds, stood in the centre of the amphitheatre.

And through the cracks in the loosely-laid, unnailed floor, I could see members of the family engaged in contriving sitting accommodations for the growing congregation. Unplaned oaken boards, placed across trunks, boxes, and huge blocks, soon filled the room, every seat being occupied, while groups of men stood about the door outside, or sat upon the embankment.

In a stout frame of unplaned wood, cased in their oilskins and tightly rolled, stood the colors of the famous regiment; and back of them, well within the second tent where one clerk was just lighting a camp lantern, were perched on rough tables a brace of field desks with the regimental books. The sergeant-major, a veteran of years of service in the regulars, sat at one of them.

A squalid, unclean box of unplaned boards, originally prepared as a coffin for a Frenchman who some time before had been condemned to death for murdering the son of Goswyn Meurskens, a Hague tavern-keeper, but pardoned by the Stadholder lay on the scaffold. It was recognized from having been left for a long time, half forgotten, at the public execution-place of the Hague.

I felt its outline, as much of it as I could reach: the same size it appeared to be the same rough, unplaned plank, just like that I had been cutting at and both, as I now perceived, iron hooped at the ends. Beyond doubt, it was "another of the same." I came to this conclusion without proceeding further, and it was a conclusion that filled me with chagrin and disappointment.

A squalid, unclean box of unplaned boards, originally prepared as a coffin for a Frenchman who some time before had been condemned to death for murdering the son of Goswyn Meurskens, a Hague tavern-keeper, but pardoned by the Stadholder lay on the scaffold. It was recognized from having been left for a long time, half forgotten, at the public execution-place of the Hague.

There were moss and shining spots on the underside of the unplaned rafters, little green pools of infusoria stood on the ledge of the windows whose panes were at times suddenly clouded by mysterious unknown breaths from without or within.