Erelong Some Of The Hired Men
Made Their Appearance, And Drank At The Spring, And Lazily Washed
Themselves And Combed Their Hair In Silence, And Some Sat Down As
If Weary, And Fell Asleep In Their Seats.
But all the while I
saw no women, though I sometimes heard a bustle in that part of
the house from which the spring came.
At length Rice himself came in, for it was now dark, with an
ox-whip in his hand, breathing hard, and he too soon settled down
into his seat not far from me, as if, now that his day's work was
done, he had no farther to travel, but only to digest his supper
at his leisure. When I asked him if he could give me a bed, he
said there was one ready, in such a tone as implied that I ought
to have known it, and the less said about that the better. So
far so good. And yet he continued to look at me as if he would
fain have me say something further like a traveller. I remarked,
that it was a wild and rugged country he inhabited, and worth
coming many miles to see. "Not so very rough neither," said he,
and appealed to his men to bear witness to the breadth and
smoothness of his fields, which consisted in all of one small
interval, and to the size of his crops; "and if we have some
hills," added he, "there's no better pasturage anywhere." I then
asked if this place was the one I had heard of, calling it by a
name I had seen on the map, or if it was a certain other; and he
answered, gruffly, that it was neither the one nor the other;
that he had settled it and cultivated it, and made it what it
was, and I could know nothing about it. Observing some guns and
other implements of hunting hanging on brackets around the room,
and his hounds now sleeping on the floor, I took occasion to
change the discourse, and inquired if there was much game in that
country, and he answered this question more graciously, having
some glimmering of my drift; but when I inquired if there were
any bears, he answered impatiently that he was no more in danger
of losing his sheep than his neighbors; he had tamed and
civilized that region. After a pause, thinking of my journey on
the morrow, and the few hours of daylight in that hollow and
mountainous country, which would require me to be on my way
betimes, I remarked that the day must be shorter by an hour there
than on the neighboring plains; at which he gruffly asked what I
knew about it, and affirmed that he had as much daylight as his
neighbors; he ventured to say, the days were longer there than
where I lived, as I should find if I stayed; that in some way, I
could not be expected to understand how, the sun came over the
mountains half an hour earlier, and stayed half an hour later
there than on the neighboring plains.
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