Lorenzo Taft met the rain halfway to his own dwelling. He pulled his hat over his eyes and bent to his mare's neck before its fury, and although the animal now and again swerved from the bridle-path at the glare of the lightning, she carried her master steadily and fleetly enough; and it was not far from his reckoning of the hour that they should pass the Lost Time mine when a broad illumination of the skies revealed the great portal, gauntly yawning in the side of the range, where a tunnel had been made in the search for silver, and abandoned. He pulled up his dripping steed and seemed to listen. Water had risen within, evidently, from the infinite enmeshment of the underground streams and springs that vein the great range; he heard it lapping upon the rocks, as it came pouring along its channel in the tunnel. It played around the mare's fetlocks, and now and again the animal fretfully lifted her forefoot. Another flare of the weird, unearthly yellow light, more lingering, brighter, than the last, showed the swift clear flow of the current, the great bleak beetling rocks of the oval aperture, the trees on the mountain side high above it, and beyond, three hundred yards or so, a little log cabin set upon the slope, which was a gentler declivity here, surrounded by a few acres of cornfield, and the appurtenances of beehives, hen-house, and rickety barn common to the humbler dwellings of the region. He could even see, between the house and the steep ascent immediately behind it, the far-away crags, as the range rounded out, glimmering in the lightning down the vista thus formed. It seemed the simplest of domestic establishments, and a forlorn little family group met his gaze as he opened the door and stepped within. The fire had dwindled to a few embers; a flickering flare from a handful of chips flung on in anticipation of his return, heralded by the sound of the mare's hoofs, showed the unplastered log room of the region, more unkempt than is usual, and betraying the lack of a woman's hand. The slight preparation for his reception was not the work of a boy of twelve, who sat soundly sleeping in a splint-bottomed chair, his whole attitude one of somnolent collapse, as if he had not a bone in his body, his round face white and freckled, his curly red hair growing straight up from his forehead, his slightly open red mouth of a merry carelessness of expression even in unconsciousness. On the opposite side of the fireplace a little girl was staidly seated. She had a narrow, white, formal little face; thin light brown hair, short and straight and smooth, put primly back behind her ears; a small mouth, with thin, precise lips; a meek eye, with a gentle lash. Her father looked at her with a sentiment of awe rising in his stalwart breast. "Consider'ble older'n the Newnited States, an' I hed ruther keep house for a regiment o' pa'sons," he commented silently.