Still pondering upon this mystery he looked back once after he and Skimpy had reached the levels of Tanglefoot Cove. The advancing cloud still surged over the summit of the range, throwing its darkling shadows far down the steeps. In the mingled light of the dying day and the fitful gleam of the moon he could yet distinguish the stern grim crags, and below, on the slope where the grassy road wound in serpentine convolutions, he saw the cart with the little girl once more perched high, the ox between the shafts, the man driving the cow, the dogs and the calf trotting in the rear—all the little procession on the way again to seek shelter in some hospitable farmer’s cabin. And thus they fared down the rugged mountain ways into the future of Tanglefoot Cove. II. When clouds gather over Tanglefoot Cove, and storms burst on the mountain slopes, the sounds of the tempest are redoubled by the echoes of the crags, trumpeting anew the challenge of the wind and reiterating the slogan of the thunder. For begirt on every side by clifty ranges the secluded valley lies. Ike’s mother, listening to the turmoil of the powers of the air and the sinister response of the powers of the earth, as the surly night closed in, waited with anxiety for the boy’s return, and welcomed him with a brightening face as he entered. A great fire flared on the hearth, illumining the ill-laid puncheon floor; the high bed with its gayly tinted quilts; the warping bars; the spinning-wheel; the guns upon their racks of deer-antlers; the strings of red peppers, swaying overhead; the ladder leading up to the shadowy regions of the roof-room through a black hole in the ceiling. The fire-light even revealed in a dusky nook a rude box on rockers—which had cradled in turn these stalwart soldiers, and later Ike, himself—and, under a low shelf in the corner, a tiny empty chair. The wind rushed down the chimney, and every cranny piped a shrill fife-like note, and the thunder rolled. “I dunno when I ever hev seen sech a onexpected storm,” said Ike’s father as he hung up the ox-yoke on the wall, having turned out the team from his wagon. “T’wouldn’t s’prise me none,” said aunt Jemima, “ef ’twar jes’ a big blow ez tore down the fodder-stack an’ rooted up yer orcherd’ an’ never gin ye nare drop o’ rain fur the drought;” she cast an almost reprehensive glance upon him, as if it were through his neglect that he was threatened with these elemental disasters. “Waal,” he retorted, “I ain’t settin’ myself ter fault the Lord’s weather. An’ my immortal hopes ain’t anchored in a fodder-stack, nuther in the orcherd. An’ thar’s no dispensation ez kin happen ez I ain’t in an’ about able ter stan’.”