The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 5.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

[169] lively, merry woman, and proved rare company for me. Afterwards we rode until the sun was nigh setting, when we came to a little hut on the shore of a broad lake at a place called Massapog. It had been dwelt in by a white family formerly, but it was now empty, and much decayed in the roof, and as we did ride up to it we saw a wild animal of some sort leap out of one of its windows, and run into the pines. Here Mr. Easton said we must make shift to tarry through the night, as it was many miles to the house of a white man. So, getting off our horses, we went into the hut, which had but one room, with loose boards for a floor; and as we sat there in the twilight, it looked dismal enough; but presently Mr. Easton, coming in with a great load of dried boughs, struck a light in the stone fireplace, and we soon had a roaring fire. His sister broke off some hemlock boughs near the door, and made a broom of them, with which she swept up the floor, so that when we sat down on blocks by the hearth, eating our poor supper, we thought ourselves quite comfortable and tidy. It was a wonderful clear night, the moon rising, as we judged, about eight of the clock, over the tops of the hills on the easterly side of the lake, and shining brightly on the water in a long line of light, as if a silver bridge had been laid across it. Looking out into the forest, we could see the beams of the moon, falling here and there through the thick tops of the pines and hemlocks, and showing their tall trunks, like so many pillars in a church or temple. There was a westerly wind blowing, not steadily, but in long gusts, which, sounding from a great