upporting the clumsy roof, the craggy logs and sticks at the side, the
hanging skin which served as a door and was barely visible, the tumble
down appearance of everything, and withal the solemn stillness which
brooded within the lodge: all these made the scene weird and impressive
in a striking degree.

The fire burned so fitfully that it threw ghostly shadows about the
apartment, sometimes flooding it with light, and again falling so low
that the other end of the lodge could not be seen at all. Without, the
night could not have been more dismal. There was no thunder or
lightning, and the rain fell with that steady patter on the leaves,
which at ordinary times forms the most soothing accompaniment of sleep,
but which to Jack Carleton only added to his dismal dejection of
spirits.

The roof of the lodge was so thick and diversified in its composition
that the music of the patter on the shingles was lost. At intervals the
wind stirred the limbs, and, though none of the trees were very close,
the lad could hear the soughing among the branches, as the hunter hears
it in early autumn when the leaves begin to fall.

Could the melancholy croaking of frogs in the distance have fallen on
the ears of the boy, he would have had all the factors that go to bring
on the most absolute loneliness of which a human being is capable.
Unfortunately Jack did not need that addition to render his misery
complete, for it was furnished by his own condition and situation.

"I am many long, long miles from home," he reflected, as a sharp pain
gyrated through his brain, and the flickering fire seemed to be bobbing
up and down and back and forth in a witches' dance; "and little hope is
there of my ever seeing mother again. Ah, if I was only there now!"

He let his head fall back and heaved a deep sigh. He recalled his plain
but comfortable bed, which became the most deliciously comfortable the
mind can conceive, when his mother shoved the blankets in about him, or
"tucked him up," as she never failed to do every evening he was at home;
the good-night kiss from those affectionate lips; the magic touch of
those fingers which pushed back the hair from his forehead, ere she
bent over him with the last salute; the loving, caressing care when he
was threatened with the slightest illness, which made the boy long for
illness for the sake of such care: these and other blessed memories came
back with a power which caused the eyes to overflow with sorrow