e had been freshly kindled with small twigs of the sugar maple,
that priceless tree often standing fifty to an acre in the wilderness,
and giving the pioneers their best fire-wood, their coolest shade, and
their sweetest food. Vivid blue sparks were still flashing among the
little white stars of the gray moss on the big backlog. From the blazing
ends of the log there came the soft, airy music and the faint, sweet
scent of bubbling sap. This main room of Cedar House was very large,
almost vast, taking up the whole lower floor. It was the dining room as
well as the sitting room; and when some grand occasion arose, it served
even as a drawing-room, and did it handsomely, too. This great room of
Cedar House always reminded David of the ancient halls in "The Famous
History of Montilion," a romance of chivalry from which most of his
ideas of life were taken, and upon which most of his ideals of living
were formed. Surely, he thought, the castle of the "Knight of the
Oracle" could not be grander than this great room of Cedar House.

The rich dark wood of its walls and floor--all rudely smoothed with the
broadaxe and the whipsaw--hung overhead in massive beams. From these
low, blackened timbers there swung many antique lamps, splendid enough
for a palace and strangely out of place in a log house of the
wilderness. On the rough walls there were also large sconces of
burnished silver but poorly filled with tallow candles. In the bare
spaces between these silver sconces were the heads of wild animals
mingled with many rifles, both old and new, and other arms of the
hunter. Over the tall mantelpiece there were crossed two untarnished
swords which had been worn by the judge's father in the Revolution. On
the red cedar of the floor, polished by wear and rubbing, there lay the
skins of wild beasts, together with costly foreign rugs. The same
strange mixture of rudeness and refinement was to be seen everywhere
throughout the room. The table standing in the centre of the floor,
ready for the evening meal, was made of unplaned boards, rudely put
together by the unskilled hands of the backwoods. Yet it was set with
the finest china, the rarest glass, and the richest silver that the
greatest skill of the old world could supply. The chairs placed around
the table were made of unpainted wood from the forest, with seats woven
out of the coarse rushes from the river. And there, between the front
windows, stood Ruth's piano, the first in that pa