task had not been well done, or the draught was stronger than usual, the wind being favorable; for a remnant of the green-wood log had begun to burn afresh, although only a timorous blaze now and then showed itself, flickering out in the steady column of smoke slowly tending up the chimney. There were pipes on the shelf that served as mantel, a rough pallet in the corner, and a few rude cooking utensils on a bench. As he looked about in increasing surprise, he noted a variety of fragments of rock, systematically ranged on the floor beside the walls. A strong spade and a pickaxe with its point broken off stood in the corner. With a mind void of even a speculation, he investigated the shed-room; then ascended to the roof-room, where the window by the chimney was open to the air. It looked out above the low branches of the orchard, where the sunshine and the shadows still alternated in the old vogue known amongst the leaves since light first dawned upon the world. It showed, too, the great dark mountains hard by, with the deeper shades amongst them that betokened ravine and chasm below the level of his eye; and there was a range afar off, appearing above their massive summits, faintly blue, known by sight only, as it were, for its name was unfamiliar, and its relative position to the other steeps was such that it could be seen only from the window of his old room. A dead tree close at hand, denuded of leaves and bark, tall and blanched to a silver tint, showed its dendritic symmetry in pallid glistening lines against the soft blue of those far slopes, and the sense of distance between the two, the leagues of sunshine, was immeasurable. The sight of the mountain, so long unseen, with the overpowering recollection of the past, had an indescribable effect upon him. His face was wistful, his nerves grew tense, his hand trembled as he leaned upon its palm on the window-sill. Another man, feeling thus, would have wished that he had not come, and would have upbraided himself, perchance, that he had been so ill content, placed as he was of late. Jepson rarely, indeed, questioned the wisdom and the policy of his own decrees. He turned himself about with a long-drawn sigh, quivering, it seemed, through the very flesh of his heart that ached physically, tramped heavily down the stairs, and without a moment’s hesitation addressed himself to removing the stranger’s effects; piling them all in a heap outside of the boundary fence, where the owner might come and take them or leave them, as he saw fit. “Ef he hed kem an’ axed me, whoever he be, he’d hev been welcome ter bide ez long ez he wanted ter,” he observed, the sentiment of the proprietor strong within him and affronted by this lack of formality. “I hain’t been outer reach noways ez I knows on. An’ ef my kin be dead, _I_ ain’t.”