ducated boy's head; much more horrible, then, to a young backwoodsman
like Rick. On this, the most benign day that ever dawns upon the world,
was he led into these endless wastes of forest to be terrified by the
"harnts"?

Suddenly those voices from the earth again! One was singing a drunken
catch,--it broke into falsetto, and ended with an unmistakable hiccup.

Rick's blood came back with a rush.

"I hev never hearn tell o' the hoobies gittin' boozy!" he said with a
laugh. "That's whar they hev got the upper-hand o' humans."

As he gazed again at the thicket, he saw now something that he had been
too much agitated to observe before,--a column of dense smoke that rose
from far down the declivity, and seemed to make haste to hide itself
among the low-hanging boughs of a clump of fir-trees.

"It's somebody's house down thar," was Rick's conclusion. "I kin find
out the way to Birk's Mill from the folkses."

When he neared the smoke, he paused abruptly, staring once more.

There was no house! The smoke rose from among low pine bushes. Above
were the snow-laden branches of the fir.

"Ef thar war a house hyar, I reckon I could see it!" said Rick
doubtfully, infinitely mystified.

There was a continual drip, drip of moisture all around. Yet a thaw had
not set in. Rick looked up at the gigantic icicles that hung to the
crags and glittered in the sun,--not a drop trickled from them. But this
fir-tree was dripping, dripping, and the snow had melted away from the
nearest pine bushes that clustered about the smoke. There was heat below
certainly, a strong heat, and somebody was keeping the fire up steadily.

"An' air it folkses ez live underground like foxes an' sech!" Rick
exclaimed, astonished, as he came upon a large, irregularly shaped rift
in the rocks, and heard the same reeling voice from within, beginning to
sing once more. But for this bacchanalian melody, the noise of Rick's
entrance might have given notice of his approach. As it was, the
inhabitants of this strange place were even more surprised than he,
when, after groping through a dark, low passage, an abrupt turn brought
him into a lofty, vaulted subterranean apartment. There was a great
flare of light, which revealed six or seven muscular men grouped about a
large copper vessel built into a rude stone furnace, and all the air was
pervaded by an incomparably strong alcoholic odor. The boy started back
with a look of terror. That pale terror was reflected on