leaving me still staring, and we resigned
ourselves to wait for their return. The fire in the forge had been
suffered to go out, and we were one and all too weary to kindle another.
We dined, or not to take that word in vain, we ate after a fashion, in
the nightmare disorder of the assayer's office, perched among boxes. A
single candle lighted us. It could scarce be called a house-warming; for
there was, of course, no fire, and with the two open doors and the open
window gaping on the night, like breaches in a fortress, it began to
grow rapidly chill. Talk ceased; nobody moved but the unhappy Chuchu,
still in quest of sofa-cushions, who tumbled complainingly among the
trunks. It required a certain happiness of disposition to look forward
hopefully, from so dismal a beginning, across the brief hours of night,
to the warm shining of to-morrow's sun.

But the hay arrived at last, and we turned, with our last spark of
courage, to the bedroom. We had improved the entrance, but it was still
a kind of rope-walking; and it would have been droll to see us
mounting, one after another, by candle light, under the open stars.

The western door--that which looked up the canyon, and through which we
entered by our bridge of flying plank--was still entire, a handsome,
panelled door, the most finished piece of carpentry in Silverado. And
the two lowest bunks next to this we roughly filled with hay for that
night's use. Through the opposite, or eastern-looking gable, with its
open door and window, a faint, diffused starshine came into the room
like mist; and when we were once in bed, we lay, awaiting sleep, in a
haunted, incomplete obscurity. At first the silence of the night was
utter. Then a high wind began in the distance among the treetops, and
for hours continued to grow higher. It seemed to me much such a wind as
we had found on our visit; yet here in our open chamber we were fanned
only by gentle and refreshing draughts, so deep was the canyon, so close
our house was planted under the overhanging rock.

THE HUNTER'S FAMILY

There is quite a large race or class of people in America, for whom we
scarcely seem to have a parallel in England. Of pure white blood, they
are unknown or unrecognisable in towns; inhabit the fringe of
settlements and the deep, quiet places of the country; rebellious to all
labour, and pettily thievish, like the English gipsies; rustically
ignorant, but with a touch of wood