t engine; and she was told
that they were at that moment sucking up whole tanks of oil from the
neighboring wells, and pumping it up the precipitous bluff, through the
lonely forest, over marsh and moor, hill and dale, to the great Humboldt
Refinery, more than three miles distant, in the town of Plummer, as it
is called,--although, in point of fact, Plummer, Tarr Farm, and several
other settlements belong to the township of Cornplanter.

There was something about this brace of monsters very fascinating to
Miselle. They seemed like subjected genii closed in these dull black
cases and this narrow shed, and yet embracing miles of territory in
their invisible arms. Even the genius of Aladdin's lamp was not so
powerful, for he was obliged to betake himself to the scene of the
wonders he was to enact,--and if imprisoned as closely as these, could
not have transferred enough oil from Tarr Farm to Plummer to fill his
own lamp.

Afterward, in rambling through the woods, Miselle often came upon the
mound raised above the buried pipe, and always regarded it with the same
admiring awe with which the fisherman of Bagdad probably looked at the
copper vessel wherein Solomon had so cunningly "canned" the rebellious
Afrit.

Leaving the shed of the monsters, Miselle followed her guide out of the
throng of derricks and tanks, and a short distance up the hill, to the
picturesque site of Messrs. Barrows and Hazleton's Refinery, the only
one now in operation on Tarr Farm.

Entering a low brick building called the still-house, she found herself
in a passage between two brick walls, pierced on either hand for five or
six oven-doors, while overhead the black roof was divided into panels by
a system of iron pipes through which the crude oil was conducted to the
caldrons above the iron doors.

The presiding genius of the place was a very fat, dirty, but intelligent
Irishman, known as Tommy, who came forward with the politeness of his
nation to greet the visitors, and explain to them the mysteries under
his charge.

"And give a guess, Ma'am, if ye plase, at what we've got a-burning
undher our big pot here," suggested he, with a hand upon one of the
oven-doors.

"Soft coal," ventured Miselle, remembering her experience at the
glassworks.

"Not a bit of it. It's the binzole intirely. We makes the ile cook
itself, an' not a hape of fu'l does it git, but what it brings along
itself."

"Seething the kid in its mother's milk," remarked Mise