s me to state, therefore, that the sober second
thought of this gentle poet was to burn down the cabin on the spot with
all its contents. This yielded to a milder counsel--waiting for the
return of the party, challenging the Right Bower, a duel to the death,
perhaps himself the victim, with a crushing explanation in extremis,
"It seems we are ONE too many. No matter; it is settled now. Farewell!"
Dimly remembering, however, that there was something of this in the last
well-worn novel they had read together, and that his antagonist might
recognize it, or even worse, anticipate it himself, the idea was quickly
rejected. Besides, the opportunity for an apotheosis of self-sacrifice
was past. Nothing remained now but to refuse the proffered bribe of
claim and cabin by letter, for he must not wait their return. He tore a
leaf from a blotted diary, begun and abandoned long since, and essayed
to write. Scrawl after scrawl was torn up, until his fury had cooled
down to a frigid third personality. "Mr. John Ford regrets to inform his
late partners that their tender of house, of furniture," however, seemed
too inconsistent with the pork-barrel table he was writing on; a more
eloquent renunciation of their offer became frivolous and idiotic from a
caricature of Union Mills, label and all, that appeared suddenly on the
other side of the leaf; and when he at last indited a satisfactory and
impassioned exposition of his feelings, the legible addendum of "Oh,
ain't you glad you're out of the wilderness!"--the forgotten first line
of a popular song, which no scratching would erase--seemed too like an
ironical postscript to be thought of for a moment. He threw aside his
pen and cast the discordant record of past foolish pastime into the dead
ashes of the hearth.

How quiet it was. With the cessation of the rain the wind too had gone
down, and scarcely a breath of air came through the open door. He walked
to the threshold and gazed on the hushed prospect. In this listless
attitude he was faintly conscious of a distant reverberation, a mere
phantom of sound--perhaps the explosion of a distant blast in the
hills--that left the silence more marked and oppressive. As he turned
again into the cabin a change seemed to have come over it. It already
looked old and decayed. The loneliness of years of desertion seemed to
have taken possession of it; the atmosphere of dry rot was in the
beams and rafters. To his excited fancy the few disordered blank