the deepening gloom.
The sunset clouds were still red without; a vague roseate suffusion was
visible through the falling water. The sun itself had not yet sunk, for
an oblique and almost level ray, piercing the cataract, painted a series
of faint prismatic tints on one side of the rugged arch. But while
the outer world was still in touch with the clear-eyed day, night was
presently here, with mystery and doubt and dark presage. The voice of
Hoho-hebee Falls seemed to him louder, full of strange, uncomprehended
meanings, and insistent iteration. Vague echoes were elicited.
Sometimes in a seeming pause he could catch their lisping sibilant tones
repeating, repeating--what? As the darkness encroached yet more heavily
upon the cataract, the sense of its unseen motion so close at hand
oppressed his very soul; it gave an idea of the swift gathering of
shifting invisible multitudes, coming and going--who could say whence
or whither? So did this impression master his nerves that he was glad
indeed when the furnace door was opened for fuel, and he could see only
the inanimate, ever-descending sheet of water--the reverse interior
aspect of Hoho-hebee Falls--all suffused with the uncanny tawny light,
but showing white and green tints like its diurnal outer aspect, instead
of the colorless outlines, resembling a drawing of a cataract, which
the cave knew by day. He did not pause to wonder whether the sudden
transient illumination was visible without, or how it might mystify the
untutored denizens of the woods, bear, or deer, or wolf, perceiving it
aglow in the midst of the waters like a great topaz, and anon lost in
the gloom. He pined to see it; the momentary cessation of darkness, of
the effect of the sounds, so strange in the obscurity, and of the chill,
pervasive mystery of the invisible, was so grateful that its influence
was tonic to his nerves, and he came to watch for its occasion and to
welcome it. He did not grudge it even when it gave the opportunity for a
close, unfriendly, calculating scrutiny of his face by the latest
comer to the still. This was the neighboring miller, also liable to the
revenue laws, the distillers being valued patrons of the mill, and since
he ground the corn for the mash he thereby aided and abetted in the
illicit manufacture of the whiskey. His life was more out in the world
than that of his underground _confreres_, and perhaps, as he had a
thriving legitimate business, and did not live by brush wh