sparks making their way upwards from the roaring wood-fire within. Here
and there on the wall hung the hides of denizens of the woods. Behind the
pine door stood an old-fashioned, double-barreled shotgun and a later
model Winchester rifle. In the opposite corner stood two short-handled
shovels and a miner's pick, while on the wall just above the fireplace
hung the head of a great buck that had one time roamed those very hills.

The fireplace, which occupied the center of the east wall, was large
and very attractive. An old hand-made crane had been built into the
firebox, and from it hung an old iron pot. The andirons were long, narrow
slabs of granite, set on edge, upon which were piled logs of pine wood,
burning merrily--not because it was a cold night, but because of its
cheerfulness.

The hearth at once became the center of attraction. It was the mysterious
fairy that bound all hearts together and welded all types of personality
into a sympathetic friendship that gathered round it. It was the stern
and fiery monarch, ordering all assembled to be quiet that it might sing
and moan and whisper the messages that it had gathered from the winter
storms or from the falling leaves.

At one side of the old fireplace, leaning back in his rickety old
arm-chair, sat Ben, Old Ben the innkeeper, his long-stemmed cob pipe
held quietly in one hand, while the other rested on the head of a huge
Russian hound that lay on the floor in front of the fire. Ben's hair was
long and gray, and on his nose rested a pair of large, old--fashioned,
silver--rimmed spectacles. His head was partly bald, and his small, gray
eyes were set well back under shaggy eyebrows. His face was covered with
a generous growth of dirty-gray whiskers, stained darkly about the mouth
from his pipe. He was a typical old mountain prospector who had seen