light--a
chimneyless, smoking oil-lamp--and led me into the same room where the
Blight and my little sister were. Their heads were covered up, but
the bed in the gloom of one corner was shaking with their smothered
laughter. Buck pointed to the middle bed.

"I can get along without that light, Buck," I said, and I must have
been rather haughty and abrupt, for a stifled shriek came from under the
bedclothes in the corner and Buck disappeared swiftly. Preparations for
bed are simple in the mountains--they were primitively simple for me
that night. Being in knickerbockers, I merely took off my coat and
shoes. Presently somebody else stepped into the room and the bed in the
other corner creaked. Silence for a while. Then the door opened, and the
head of the old woman was thrust in.

"Mart!" she said coaxingly; "git up thar now an' climb over inter bed
with that ar stranger."

That was Mart at last, over in the corner. Mart turned, grumbled, and,
to my great pleasure, swore that he wouldn't. The old woman waited a
moment.

"Mart," she said again with gentle imperiousness, "git up thar now, I
tell ye--you've got to sleep with that thar stranger."

She closed the door and with a snort Mart piled into bed with me. I
gave him plenty of room and did not introduce myself. A little more dark
silence--the shaking of the bed under the hilarity of those astonished,
bethrilled, but thoroughly unfrightened young women in the dark corner
on my left ceased, and again the door opened. This time it was the hired
man, and I saw that the trouble was either that neither Mart nor Buck
wanted to sleep with the hired man or that neither wanted to sleep
with me. A long silence and then the boy Buck slipped in. The hired man
delivered himself with the intonation somewhat of a circuit rider.

"I've been a-watchin' that star thar, through the winder. Sometimes hit
moves, then hit stands plum' still, an' ag'in hit gits to pitchin'." The
hired man must have been touching up mean whiskey himself. Meanwhile,
Mart seemed to be having spells of troubled slumber. He would snore
gently, accentuate said snore with a sudden quiver of his body and then
wake up with a climacteric snort and start that would shake the bed.
This was repeated several times, and I began to think of the unfortunate
Tom who was "fitified." Mart seemed on the verge of a fit himself, and
I waited apprehensively for each snorting climax to see if fits were a
family failing. They w