or expects them to sit elsewhere. William Pressley was one of these
persons. In the next easiest chair, on the other side of the hearth, was
his aunt, the widow Broadnax, whose short, broad, shapeless, inert
figure was lying rather than sitting almost buried in a heap of
cushions. This lady was the sister of the judge and the half-sister of
the other lady, Miss Penelope Knox,--the thin, nervous, restless little
old woman,--who was fidgeting back and forth between the hearth and the
doorway leading to the distant kitchen. The relationship of these two
ladies to one another, and the difference in their relationship to the
head of Cedar House, caused much dissension in the household, and gave
rise to certain domestic complications which always rose when least
expected.

The fire had been freshly kindled with small twigs of the sugar maple,
that priceless tree often standing fifty to an acre in the wilderness,
and giving the pioneers their best fire-wood, their coolest shade, and
their sweetest food. Vivid blue sparks were still flashing among the
little white stars of the gray moss on the big backlog. From the blazing
ends of the log there came the soft, airy music and the faint, sweet
scent of bubbling sap. This main room of Cedar House was very large,
almost vast, taking up the whole lower floor. It was the dining room as
well as the sitting room; and when some grand occasion arose, it served
even as a drawing-room, and did it handsomely, too. This great room of
Cedar House always reminded David of the ancient halls in "The Famous
History of Montilion," a romance of chivalry from which most of his
ideas of life were taken, and upon which most of his ideals of living
were formed. Surely, he thought, the castle of the "Knight of the
Oracle" could not be grander than this great room of Cedar House.

The rich dark wood of its walls and floor--all rudely smoothed with the