“Marcelly air pritty enough,” he said, still spreading his thin fingers to the blaze. “Thar ain’t no two ways ’bout’n that. I reckon a man mought take a righteous oath ez thar ain’t sech another lookin’ gal in the Newnited States—but she ain’t like them young citified Glaston gals, what walks with par’sols,—in no wise like them ez walks with par’sols,” he repeated the phrase with relish of its aptness, for to him it expressed the totality of the status. “An’ she don’t know none of the things they know. Why shucks! even the men-folks in the mountings air a thousand million o’ miles away behind the times. I fund that out through jes’ goin’ ter jail in a sure-enough town. I reckon they would fall down stunned ef they war ter see a three-story house. I’ll be bound they would be plumb afeard ter go inside o’ one, thinkin’ bein’ so high it mought fall in onto ’em an’ mash ’em tee-totally!” He looked up half laughing, half sneering at the thought of his compatriots’ ignorance, and Rathburn’s face wore a responsive gleam,—Jake Baintree’s attitude of superiority expressed so definitely how relative a thing is sophistication! “The folks in the mountings don’t know nuthin’ sca’cely,” he went on, evidently bitten by that tarantula of decrying the home-keeping things which besets more learned travelers in wider circuits. “But they won’t b’lieve that, though. Why, even me—I useter think thar warn’t no kentry but Tennessee, an’ No’th Carliny, an’ Georgy, an’ sech. It liked ter hev knocked me down whenst that man ez war my cell-mate in Glaston—ye ’member, he hed a chronic mis’ry in his throat—an’ bless the Lord, he showed me Ashy an’ Africky an’ Europe on a map he hed, an’ I couldn’t sleep none that night—the news liked ter hev tuk my breath away!” He reached behind the chair to the wood-pile, lifted a great log split in half, and flung it on the fire, which sent up a myriad of sparks and a cloud of smoke, and then seemed to dwindle in discouragement for a season, only now and then emitting a timorous blue or yellow flame to coil like a thong around the bulk of the wood, disappearing the next moment in the slowly ascending gray wreaths that had usurped the place of the dancing blazes. The room had grown very nearly dark. Rathburn could ill distinguish the crouching figure, with its elbows on its knees, seated in the rickety chair on the opposite side of the hearth. It seemed lighter without than within. He could see through the rift in the batten shutter a section of the deeply purple sky athwart which the leafless twigs of a bough near at hand moved fitfully, fretted by the wind. Once in their midst a great white star shone, pulsating in some splendid ecstasy, and then the clouds surged over it anew. The lash-like blaze sprang out once more about the log, and he caught Baintree’s eye, still illumined with a jeering laugh, and a twinkling appreciation of the incongruity between his present fully-posted estate and his former ignorance.