might with their unwelcome guest. Save for these three human beings,
the open space on the hillside was a solitude, set in a vast gloom of
forest. Beyond that darksome verge, the firelight glimmered on the
stately trunks and almost black foliage of pines, intermixed with the
lighter verdure of sapling oaks, maples, and poplars, while here and
there lay the gigantic corpses of dead trees, decaying on the
leaf-strewn soil. And it seemed to little Joe--a timorous and
imaginative child--that the silent forest was holding, its breath,
until some fearful thing should happen.

Ethan Brand thrust more wood into the fire, and closed the door of the
kiln; then looking over his shoulder at the lime-burner and his son,
he bade, rather than advised, them to retire to rest.

"For myself, I cannot sleep." said he, "I have matters that it
concerns me to meditate upon. I will watch the fire, as I used to do
in the old time."

"And call the Devil out of the furnace to keep you company, I
suppose," muttered Bartram, who had been making intimate acquaintance
with the black bottle above mentioned. "But watch, if you like, and
call as many devils as you like! For my part, I shall be all the
better for a snooze. Come, Joe!"

As the boy followed his father into the hut, he looked back at the
wayfarer, and the tears came into his eyes, for his tender spirit had
an intuition of the bleak and terrible loneliness in which this man
had enveloped himself.

When they had gone, Ethan Brand sat listening to the crackling of the