Page:Literary pilgrimages of a naturalist (IA literarypilgrima00packrich).pdf/38

 brought under its blanket shades of all the mountain legends that had in times past trooped to the mind of the poet as he sat there with sensitive soul a-quiver to their touch, photographing them in black and white for the minds of all men forever. From the fireplace stalked Mogg Megone and the powwows of his tribe, bringing with them all the dusky people of the weird stories of his day. The wind wailed their lone songs outside, and in its deep throat the aged chimney mumbled to itself old, old tales of night and darkness.

Then a slender flame slipped upward from the hearth, showing the form of the caretaker faintly shadowed and edged with light against the black background, and if I saw not her but the outline of Whittier's mother bending to light the fire and drive from the minds of the children the fancies of the dusk it must have been because the witches' twilight still held the room under its spell. Between the fore and back logs the brush of hemlock and of pine crackled and sent incense across the gloom to me, and with the leap of the flame all the weird shadows wavered into the corner and vanished. In their stead trooped up river the