But what magic there is in a spark of light! The first burst of flame drives all the sad lonesome feelings away, and the blaze of the increasing fire creates positively a home-feeling in the breast. The reason of this is plain enough. Before the fire is kindled the eye wanders restlessly through the dim light that may chance to straggle among the trees. The mind follows the eye, and gets lost among indistinct objects which it cannot understand. The feelings and the faculties are scattered--fixed upon nothing, except perhaps on this, that the wanderer is far, very far, from home. But when the bright glare of the fire springs up, everything beyond the circle of light becomes pure black. The thoughts and feelings are confined within that chamber with the ebony walls, and are forcibly attracted and made to rest upon the tree-stems, the leaves, the flowers, and other objects that glow in the ruddy blaze. Thus the thoughts are collected, and the wanderer feels, once more, something of the _home-feeling_. It was not long before our travellers realised this agreeable change. The depression of their spirits vanished with the darkness and rose with the leaping flames, until some of the members of the party became quite facetious. This was especially the case when supper had been disposed of and the pipes were lighted. It was then that Rance became chatty and anecdotal in his tendencies, and Jeffson told marvellous stories of Yankee-land, and Douglas, who devoted himself chiefly to his pipe, became an attentive listener and an awkward tripper up of the heels of those who appeared to be "drawing the long-bow," and Meyer looked, if possible, more solid and amiable than at other times, and Frank enjoyed himself in a general way, and made himself generally agreeable, while Joe Graddy became profoundly sententious. Even Bradling's nature appeared to be softened, for he looked less forbidding and grumpy than at other times, and once condescended to remark that a life in the woods was not such a bad one after all! "Not such a bad one!" cried Joe Graddy; "why, messmate, is that all you've got to say about it? Now I'll give 'e my opinion on that head. This is where it lies--see here." (Joe removed his pipe from his mouth and held up his fore-finger by way of being very impressive.) "I've travelled pretty well now in every quarter of the globe; gone right round it in fact, and found that it _is_ round after all,--'cause why? I went in, so to speak, at one end from the west'ard an' comed out at the same end from the east'ard, though I must confess it all appeared to me as flat's a pancake, always exceptin' the mountainous parts of it, w'ich must be admitted to be lumpy. Hows'ever, as I wos sayin', I've bin a'most all over the world--I've smoked wi' the Turks, an' hobnobbled with John Chinaman, an' scrambled through the jungles of the Indies, an' gone aloft the Himalayas--" "What, have you seen the Himalayas?" asked Jeffson, with a doubtful look.