degree of prosperity which to-day we should call
indigence than impelled by some mysterious impulse of their nature they
abandoned all and pushed farther westward, to encounter new perils and
privations in the effort to regain the meagre comforts which they had
voluntarily renounced. Many of them had already forsaken that region for
the remoter settlements, but among those remaining was one who had been
of those first arriving. He lived alone in a house of logs surrounded on
all sides by the great forest, of whose gloom and silence he seemed a
part, for no one had ever known him to smile nor speak a needless word.
His simple wants were supplied by the sale or barter of skins of wild
animals in the river town, for not a thing did he grow upon the land
which, if needful, he might have claimed by right of undisturbed
possession. There were evidences of "improvement"--a few acres of ground
immediately about the house had once been cleared of its trees, the
decayed stumps of which were half concealed by the new growth that had
been suffered to repair the ravage wrought by the ax. Apparently the
man's zeal for agriculture had burned with a failing flame, expiring in
penitential ashes.

The little log house, with its chimney of sticks, its roof of warping
clapboards weighted with traversing poles and its "chinking" of clay,
had a single door and, directly opposite, a window. The latter, however,
was boarded up--nobody could remember a time when it was not. And none
knew why it was so closed; certainly not because of the occupant's
dislike of light and air, for on those rare occasions when a hunter had
passed that lonely spot the recluse had commonly been seen sunning
himself on his doorstep if heaven had provided sunshine for his need. I
fancy there are few persons living to-day who ever knew the secret of
that window, but I am one, as you shall see.

The man's name was said to be Murlock. He was apparently seventy years
old, actually about fifty. Something besides years had had a hand in his
aging. His hair and long, full beard were white, his gray, lustreless
eyes sunken, his face singularly seamed with wrinkles which appeared to
belong to two intersecting systems. In figure he was tall and spare,
with a stoop of the shoulders--a burden bearer. I never saw him; these
particulars I learned from my grandfather, from whom also I got the
man's story when I was a lad. He had known him when living near by in
that early day.

O