a devil?"

[Pg 43]

But the most singular portion of the room was the great fire-place and the arrangements connected with it. It was a structure perfectly enormous, and the stones required for its erection must have made a large opening in the quarry. It was deep and high. An ox could easily have been roasted whole before it. Over it was a shelf which no one in these degenerate days could reach. On either side were two small closets,—made in the deep wall,—the door of each being made from a wide plank, and secured by a large wooden button. In the back of the fire-place, on one side of it, was the door of a great oven,—rivalling in size, I presume, the tomb of the ancient grandee in the east—where the traveler slept, perhaps on some of the very dust of the proud man who gloried in the expectation of a kingly sepulchre. On either side of the room on a line with the vast fire-place were two doors opening into the air, and exactly opposite to each other. The broad hearth extended from door to door, being flagged with large smooth stones. Each door was framed of heavy oaken timber,—the boards in consequence of the depths of the frame being sunk as deep panels. Each had a heavy wooden latch, and a vast curved piece of wood was the handle by which it was to be opened.

On the great pavement in front of the fire-place[Pg 44] stood Cæsar, a man with a frame finely developed. His twin brother Pompey dwelt on an adjoining farm,—so resembling him as one of the colored people said that you could "scarcely tell them apart, they were so like one another, especially Pomp." He had a rough coat thrown over him,—a fur-cap on his head, and he held in one hand an iron chain that trailed on the stone hearth and in the other a lantern emitting a blaze of light.

[Pg 44]

When we were all in our places Cæsar directed one of the boys to open the door on the right hand. There on the snow revealed by the light of his lantern, was the famous log on a line parallel with the stone paving that crossed the end of the room. Around this log, he with the help of the boy fastened the iron chain, securing it with a spike partially driven into the wood with a heavy hammer. The door on the left was then thrown open, and we saw by the lights borne by several of the laborers, that the oxen which had drawn the great segment of the trunk from the forest were standing there upon the snow waiting to complete their labor for the evening. The long chain extending across the whole width of the room was drawn through the door and fastened to the yokes of the oxen.

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