of dwarf beech and
maple, that appeared to crown the topmost bastion of them all, nodded in
the swaying wind like funeral plumes upon a Titan's hearse.

In fact, the only gleam of light upon the place--and it was a crazy,
fitful gleam at that--came from a rushing stream that took its source
high up among the hills. This brook first seen off to the extreme left
of the house, came dashing down the rocks until it reached a level.
Then, swinging round with sudden swirl it engirdled the place, and after
many a curious twist and turn got straight again and went onward far off
among the neighboring fields and lost itself at last in the Oswegatchie.
The interior of the house was just as wild and dreary as the exterior.
The rooms, for the most part, were too large for comfort. When one
spoke, a dozen ghostly echoes answered, and at twilight the smaller
children huddled around the kitchen fire and seldom went beyond that
cheerful room until bed time. Often, in the dead of night, the creaking
of timber and the voices of the wind startled the little ones from
sleep, and a sense of something unreal and mysterious overshadowed their
young minds.

It was, take it all in all, a grim, gaunt, strange place in which to fix
a home. It was there, however, in the midst of such sterile
surroundings, that the next five years of Willard's life were mainly
passed. There were no external influences brought to bear upon this
portion of his existence that were not harsh and wild and stern. His
father, honest even to the verge of fanaticism, was letting his heart
corrode to bitterness under the sense of hopeless indebtedness. The
churlish fields attached to the place offered but a grudging reward for
the hardest labor. There was no hope of his acquiring a profession or
even an education beyond the scant opportunity of Allen Wight's school,
unless he himself could earn the means to pay for it. Still he was
neither discouraged nor without hope. Instead of sinking under this
accumulation of difficulties, his moral fibre was rendered more robust,
and with it his physical strength and usefulness developed daily.

Thus a year sped on, and at the end of that time his father, as one
means of adding something to his scanty resources, obtained the job of
hauling a quantity of iron ore from the ore beds near Little York to a
forge and furnace at Fullerville. Willard with an ox-team and his uncle
Henry with a span of fine horses, were employed for the most pa