, a
heavier man, apparently had some doubts, for he leaned only slightly
against one of the projecting rails as he whittled a pine stick, and
with his every movement the frail structure trembled. The log cabin
seemed as rickety as the fence. The little front porch had lost a
puncheon here and there in the flooring--perhaps on some cold winter
night when Hollis's energy was not sufficiently exuberant to convey
him to the wood-pile; the slender posts that upheld its roof seemed
hardly strong enough to withstand the weight of the luxuriant vines
with their wealth of golden gourds which had clambered far over the
moss-grown clapboards; the windows had fewer panes of glass than rags;
and the chimney, built of clay and sticks, leaned portentously away
from the house. The open door displayed a rough, uncovered floor; a
few old rush-bottomed chairs; a bedstead with a patch-work calico
quilt, the mattress swagging in the centre and showing the badly
arranged cords below; strings of bright red pepper hanging from the
dark rafters; a group of tow-headed, grave-faced, barefooted children;
and, occupying almost one side of the room, a broad, deep,
old-fashioned fireplace, where winter and summer a lazy fire burned
under a lazy pot.

Notwithstanding the poverty of the aspect of the place and the evident
sloth of its master, it was characterized by a scrupulous cleanliness
strangely at variance with its forlorn deficiencies. The rough floor
was not only swept but scoured; the dark rafters, whence depended the
flaming banners of the red pepper, harbored no cobwebs; the grave
faces of the white-haired children bore no more dirt than was
consistent with their recent occupation of making mudpies; and the
sedate, bald-headed baby, lying silent but wide-awake in an uncouth
wooden cradle, was as clean as clear spring water and yellow soap
could make it. Mrs. Hollis herself, seen through the vista of opposite
open doors, energetically rubbing the coarse wet clothes upon the
resonant washboard, seemed neat enough in her blue-and-white checked
homespun dress, and with her scanty hair drawn smoothly back from her
brow into a tidy little knot on the top of her head.

Spare and gaunt she was, and with many lines in her prematurely old
face. Perhaps they told of the hard fight her brave spirit waged
against the stern ordering of her life; of the struggles with
squalor,--inevitable concomitant of poverty,--and to keep together the
souls and bodie