Far away in a dim recess of the deep woods, on the summit of the ridge, amidst crags and chasms and almost inaccessible steeps, the shadows had gathered about a dismal little log hut of one room--like all the other dismal little hovels of the mountain, save that in front of the door the grass was worn away from a wide space by the frequent tread of many feet; a preternaturally large wood-pile was visible under a frail shelter in the rear of the house; from the chimney a dense smoke rose in a heavy column; and the winds that rushed past it carried on their breath an alcoholic aroma. But for these points of dissimilarity and its peculiarly secluded situation, Mark Yates, dismounting from his restive steed, might have been entering his mother’s dwelling. The opening door shed no glare of firelight out into the deepening gloom of the dusk. It was very warm within, however--almost too warm for comfort; but the shutters of the glassless window were tightly barred, and the usual chinks of log-house architecture were effectually closed with clay. The darkness of the room was accented rather than dispelled by a flickering tallow dip stuck in an empty bottle in default of a candlestick, and there was an all-pervading and potent odor of spirits. The salient feature of the scene was a stone furnace, from the closed door of which there flashed now and then a slender thread of brilliant light. A great copper still rose from it, and a protruding spiral tube gracefully meandered away in the darkness through the cool waters of the refrigerator to the receiver of its precious condensed vapors. There were four jeans-clad mountaineers seated in the gloomy twilight of this apartment; and the stories of “bar-huntin’ an’ sech” must have been very jewels of discourse to prove so alluring, as they could certainly derive no brilliancy from their unique but somber setting. “Hy’re, Mark! Come in, come in,” was the hospitable insistence which greeted young Yates. “Hev a cheer,” said Aaron Brice, the eldest of the party, bringing out from the darkness a chair and placing it in the feeble twinkle of the tallow dip. “Take a drink, Mark,” said another of the men, producing a broken-nosed pitcher of ardent liquor. But notwithstanding this effusive hospitality, which was very usual at the still-house, Mark Yates had an uncomfortable impression that he had interrupted an important conference, and that his visit was badly timed. The conversation that ensued was labored, and hosts and guest were a trifle ill at ease. Frequent pauses occurred, broken only by the sound of the furnace fire, the boiling and bubbling within the still, the gurgle of the water through its trough, that led it down from a spring on the hill behind the house to the refrigerator, the constant dripping of the “doublings” from the worm into the keg below. Now and then one of the brothers hummed a catch which ran thus:--