The picture seen through the open door, had there been any to see, was almost as motionless as a tableau, and it was a starkly grim one, with murky shadows against a fitful light. A ray of the setting sun forced its inquisitive way inward upon the semi-darkness of the interior. A red wavering from the open hearth, where supper preparations had been going forward, threw unsteady patches of fire reflection outward. In the pervading smell of dead smoke from a blackened chimney hung the more pungent sharpness of freshly burned gun-powder, and the man standing near the door gazed downward, with a...
The picture seen through the open door, had there been any to see, was almost as motionless as a tableau, and it was a starkly grim one, with murky sh...
"When a feller an' a gal washes their hands in the same basin at the same time, it's a tol'able good sign they won't git married this year." The oracle spoke through the bearded lips of a farmer perched on the top step of his cabin porch. The while he construed omens, a setter pup industriously gnawed at his boot-heels. The girl was bending forward, her fingers spread in a tin basin, as the man at her elbow poured water slowly from a gourd-dipper. Heaped, in disorder against the cabin wall, lay their red hunting-coats, crops, and riding gauntlets.
"When a feller an' a gal washes their hands in the same basin at the same time, it's a tol'able good sign they won't git married this year." The oracl...
