Page:Edgar Huntly, or The Sleep Walker.djvu/176

 My heart leaped with joy at this sight: I hastened towards it in the hope that my uncertainties and toils and dangers were now drawing to a close. This dwelling was suited to the poverty and desolation which surrounded it: it consisted of a few unhewn logs laid upon each other, to the height of eight or ten feet, including a quadrangular space of similar dimensions, and covered by thatch: there was no window, light being sufficiently admitted into the crevices between the logs; these had formerly been loosely plastered with clay, but air and rain had crumbled and washed the greater part of this rude cement away: somewhat like a chimney, built of half-burned bricks, was perceived at one corner; the door was fastened by a leathern thong tied to a peg.

All within was silence and darkness. I knocked at the door and called; but no one moved or answered: the tenant, whoever he was, was absent. His leave could not be obtained; and I therefore entered without it. The autumn had made some progress, and the air was frosty and sharp: my mind and muscles had been of late so strenuously occupied, that the cold had not been felt: the cessation of exercise, however, quickly restored my Sensibility in this respect; but the unhappy girl complained of being half frozen.

Fire, therefore, was the first object of my search: happily, some embers were found upon the hearth, together with potato stalks and dry chips; and of these, with much difficulty, I kindled a fire, by which some warmth was imparted to our shivering limbs. The light enabled me, as I sat upon the ground, to survey the interior of this mansion.

Three saplings, stripped of their branches, and bound together at their ends by twigs, formed a kind of bedstead, which was raised from the ground by four stones; ropes stretched across these, and covered by a blanket, c0nstituted the bed: a board, of which one end rested on the bedstead, and the other was thrust between the logs that composed the wall, sustained the stale fragments of a rye loaf; a cedar bucket, kept entire by withs instead of hoops, in which was a little water, full of droppings from the