A mile or so was passed over and then through the trees ahead was the gleam of a light, and after a time they rode into Hugh Lark's clearing. The log house, two stories in height, loomed up darkly in the dusk of evening. The moonlight touched up its clap-board roof and the edges of its huge stone chimney, lighting them fantastically, and through the greased paper-paned window came the glow of a fire within, evidently from the great fireplace. There was the baying of a hound, and then the quick bark of a shepherd dog in concert, and then the door opened and the frame of Hugh was outlined against the inner light. "Get back, you dogs! Back to your kennel, Shep, and you, Jack, over to the barn with you!" he bellowed, and the dogs, that looked most aggressive, slunk off at the word of their master. The horses were soon fastened to the rail fence and the horsemen approached the house to be greeted on the threshold with the outstretched hand of Hugh. "Come in, mon, come in. It's a cauld nicht, as they ca' it in auld Scotland," and he grasped each man's hand welcomingly and drew them within and up to the great fireplace, for though spring had come, yet the nights were cold. Hugh had greeted them as a Scotchman can. Though a tolerably educated man, yet he loved to drop now and then back into his mother tongue. The pilot's wife, a comely dame but little younger than himself, sat near the light of the fireplace busily spinning. His two chubby children had been put to bed in the room o'erhead and the scene within was that of quiet, home comfort. Bunches of dried herbs and a few hams and flitches of dried bacon and deer meat depended from the rafters of the ceiling. A few common prints adorned the rude white-washed walls and o'er the mantle piece, supported by deer antlers, was an old-time flint-lock rifle of great weight and heavy bore. The pilot introduced his wife, who, having made the customary courtesy, resumed her spinning, the whir, whir of the wheel mingling with the cracking of the fire-logs. Hugh drew forward two home-made chairs for his visitors, and Ande sat down, but Dick was interested in the great rifle o'er the mantle piece. Hugh noticed his concentrated look on the old rifle. "Aye, ye are looking at a highly prized relic in that rifle. Test the weight of it, sir; notice the large bore capable of carrying a ball the size of a schoolboy's marble." Dick took down the gun and examined it.