After some trouble, we got the door open, and found that the hut was fortunately not entirely filled with hay; a space about six or eight feet broad had been boarded off between it and the outer wall for the use of the wild-hauer. This was to serve us as parlor and kitchen and all, except bed-room, which was to be sought for in the hay-stack itself. Our floor was the bare earth; the logs which formed the wall were badly jointed, and the wind whistled through the gaping cracks in the most uncomfortable manner; one could almost fancy that it was trying to articulate the dreaded word, rheu--matism.
However, the ever-active Joseph, bustling about, found some dry wood, and we made a blazing fire on the floor at the imminent risk of burning our beds, and slightly thawed ourselves; we continued our researches, and found a shallow wooden pail, carefully covered over, holding some two gallons of sour milk, left by the charitable hay-man some fortnight before, for the use of any benighted hunter who might have the luck to stumble on the hut, and one of those abominable one-legged milking-stools, so common in that part of the world, which, having vainly endeavored to sit on, and having tumbled into the fire in consequence, to Joseph's intense amusement, I hurled madly over the hay out into the storm.
As the clatter made amongst the shingles of the roof by its hasty exist subsided, we heard a noise which struck terror into both our hearts, and would doubtless have chilled our very marrow, if it had not been below freezing-point already. Devils! Berg-geister! Fly! out into the black storm! over the precipice! into the torrent! before some fearful mopping and mowing face, too ghastly horrible for human eye-ball to see without bursting, or human brain to conceive without madness, gibber out upon us from that dark corner! Listen: there it is again! And--mew-w-w-w-w! down tumbled between us a miserable, half-grown, gray kitten, nearly dead with cold and starvation, doubtless absent on some poaching expedition when the hut was deserted, and not thought worth the going back for. Oh! the joy of that unfortunate little beast at seeing man and fire once more! How she staggered about with tail erect, vainly trying to mew and purr at the same time! having to be perpetually pulled out of the fire, and "put out," to prevent her playing the part of one of Samson's foxes with our beds, filling the cabin with unspeakable smells of singed hair! And now she would persist in walking up our backs, and tickling us to madness with her scorched tail!