."

"Of course; go on! She's better than me. I know I'm a fratricide, that's
what I am," said Rand, throwing himself on the upper of the two berths
that formed the bedstead of the cabin.

"I've seen her three times," continued Ruth.

"And you've known me twenty years," interrupted his brother.

Ruth turned on his heel, and walked towards the door.

"That's right; go on! Why don't you get the chalk?"

Ruth made no reply. Rand descended from the bed, and, taking a piece of
chalk from the shelf, drew a line on the floor, dividing the cabin in
two equal parts.

"You can have the east half," he said, as he climbed slowly back into
bed.

This mysterious rite was the usual termination of a quarrel between the
twins. Each man kept his half of the cabin until the feud was forgotten.
It was the mark of silence and separation, over which no words of
recrimination, argument, or even explanation, were delivered, until
it was effaced by one or the other. This was considered equivalent to
apology or reconciliation, which each were equally bound in honor to
accept.

It may be remarked that the floor was much whiter at this line of
demarcation, and under the fresh chalk-line appeared the faint evidences
of one recently effaced.

Without apparently heeding this potential ceremony, Ruth remained
leaning against the doorway, looking upon the night, the bulk of whose
profundity and blackness seemed to be gathered below him. The vault
above was serene and tranquil, with a few large far-spaced stars; the
abyss beneath, untroubled by sight or sound. Stepping out upon the
ledge, he leaned far over the shelf that sustained their cabin,
and listened. A faint rhythmical roll, rising and falling in long
undulations against the invisible horizon, to his accustomed ears told
him the wind was blowing among the pines in the valley. Yet, mingling
with this familiar sound, his ear, now morbidly acute, seemed to detect
a stranger inarticulate murmur, as of confused and excited voices,
swelling up from the mysterious depths to the stars above, and again
swallowed up in the gulfs of silence below. He was roused from a
consideration of this phenomenon by a faint glow towards the east, which
at last brightened, until the dark outline of the distant walls of the
valley stood out against the sky. Were his other senses participating in
the delusion of his ears? for with the brightening light came the faint
odor of burning timber.

His face grew an