unrecognizable.

"Never mind," her father said at intervals, taking her cold hand,
"we-uns 'll git him back, Eveliny. The Lord hed a mother wunst, an' I'll
be bound He keeps a special pity for a woman an' her child."

"Oh, great gosh! who'd hev dreamt we'd hev missed him so!" cried Tim,
shifting his position, and slipping his left arm over the back of his
chair. "Jes ter think o' the leetle size o' him, an' the great big gap
he hev lef roun' this hyar ha'th-stone!"

"An' yit he jes sot underfoot, 'mongst the cat an' the dogs, jes ez
humble!" said Stephen.

"I'd git him back even ef he warn't no kin ter me, Eveliny," declared
Tim, and he spoke advisedly, remembering that the youth was a Kittredge.

Still Evelina said not a word. All that night she silently walked the
puncheon floor, while the rest of the household slept. The dogs, in
vague disturbance, because of the unprecedented vigil and stir in the
midnight, wheezed uneasily from time to time, and crept restlessly about
under the cabin, now and again thumping their backs or heads against the
floor; but at last they betook themselves to slumber. The hickory logs
broke in twain as they burned, and fell on either side, and presently
there was only the dull red glow of the embers on her pale face, and the
room was full of brown shadows, motionless, now that the flames flared
no more. Once when the red glow, growing ever dimmer, seemed almost
submerged beneath the gray ashes, she paused and stirred the coals. The
renewed glimmer showed a fixed expression in her eyes, becoming momently
more resolute. At intervals she knelt at the window and placed her hands
about her face to shut out the light from the hearth, and looked out
upon the night. How the chill stars loitered! How the dawn delayed! The
great mountain gloomed darkling above the Cove. The waning moon, all
melancholy and mystic, swung in the purple sky. The bare, stark boughs
of the trees gave out here and there a glimmer of hoar-frost. There was
no wind; when she heard the dry leaves whisk she caught a sudden glimpse
of a fox that, with his crafty shadow pursuing him, leaped upon the
wood-pile, nimbly ran along its length, and so, noiselessly, away--while
the dogs snored beneath the house. A cock crew from the chicken-roost;
the mountain echoed the resonant strain. She saw a mist come stealing
softly along a precipitous gorge; the gauzy web hung shimmering in the
moon; presently the trees were invisible; anon