But that evening when they sat at supper,--much later than usual, since the favorite Spot had wandered far into the forest, and did not return till she was sought and found and driven reluctantly home, with many pauses by the way,--the furtive glances across the table did not emigrate from his side of it. The meal was served in the main room of the cabin, to avoid the cloud of moths which the light outside in the passage would attract. In the white, languid, dispirited glow of the tallow dip the furnishings of the apartment were but dimly visible. Now and again the flicker of the wind set astir the pendent strings of pepper and bunches of dried herbs and various indiscriminate gear that swung from the beams. The red embers where the supper had been cooked were spread apart on the hearth that the heat might be lessened, and here and there through the white efflorescence of the ash only a tinge of the vermilion hues of the coals could be discerned. Despite its subdued red glare the failing fire had little irradiating effect, and added scantily to the cheer of the apartment. The batten shutter flapped back and forth with a wooden clamor; the wind had brought clouds and rain impended, and Tubal Cain Sims’s corn was not yet all planted, and the ground would probably be too wet to plough for a week or more. Grum and indignant because of this possible dispensation of Providence, he sat in his shirt-sleeves, with his shock head bent, only looking up from under his grizzled shaggy eyebrows to discern in the glimmer of the candle the food he wanted, and only speaking to growl for it. The one crumb of comfort he coveted was denied him. A certain johnny-cake had burnt up “bodaciously” on its board as it baked before the fire, and it would seem that Tubal Cain Sims, from his youth up, had subsisted solely on the hope of this most dainty of rural cates, so surlily did he receive the news, and so solemnly did he demand to be told how in the name of Moses a cake that never was put near the fire, but baked by the heat thrown on the hearth, could be reduced to cinders. “Witched somehows, I reckon,” suggested Mrs. Sims easily; and since argument could not move that massive lady, Tubal Cain resorted to silent sulks, not in the vain hope of shaking her equilibrium, but for the sake of their own solace to the affronted spirit.