the gloom, there was something forlorn and
dispiriting in his walk. He approached with a slow, dragging step,
apparently unaware of my presence.

"Good evening, friend!" I said.

He stopped, stood still for half a minute, and finally responded,--

"Who air you?"

The tone of his voice, querulous and lamenting, rather implied, "Why
don't you let me alone?"

"I am a traveller," I answered, "bound from Peoria to Bloomington, and
have lost my way. It is dark, as you know, and likely to rain, and I
don't see how I can get any farther to-night."

Another pause. Then he said, slowly, as if speaking to himself,--

"There a'n't no other place nearer 'n four or five mile."

"Then I hope you will let me stay here."

The answer, to my surprise, was a deep sigh.

"I am used to roughing it," I urged; "and besides, I will pay for any
trouble I may give you."

"It a'n't _that_," said he; then added, hesitatingly,--"fact is, we're
lonesome people here,--don't often see strangers; yit I s'pose you can't
go no furder;--well, I'll talk to my wife."

Therewith he entered the shanty, leaving me a little disconcerted with
so uncertain, not to say suspicious, a reception. I heard the sound of
voices--one of them unmistakable in its nasal shrillness--in what seemed
to be a harsh debate, and distinguished the words, "I didn't bring
it on," followed with, "Tell him, then, if you like, and let him
stay,"--which seemed to settle the matter. The door presently opened,
and the man said,--

"I guess we'll have t' accommodate you. Give me your things, an' then
I'll put your horse up."

I unstrapped my valise, took off the saddle, and, having seen Peck to
his fodder-tent, where I left him with some ears of corn in an
old basket, returned to the shanty. It was a rude specimen of the
article,--a single room of some thirty by fifteen feet, with a large
fireplace of sticks and clay at one end, while a half-partition of
unplaned planks set on end formed a sort of recess for the bed at the
other. A good fire on the hearth, however, made it seem tolerably
cheerful, contrasted with the dismal gloom outside. The furniture
consisted of a table, two or three chairs, a broad bench, and a
kitchen-dresser of boards. Some golden ears of seed-corn, a few sides of
bacon, and ropes of onions hung from the rafters.

A woman in a blue calico gown, with a tin coffee-pot in one hand and a
stick in the other, was raking out the red coals from under the burn