of which they were to pass the night. There was but one of their number,
perhaps, who had become so estranged from natural sympathies, by the
absorbing spell of the pursuit, as to acknowledge no satisfaction at the
sight of human faces, in the remote and solitary region whither they had
ascended. A vast extent of wilderness lay between them and the nearest
settlement, while scant a mile above their heads was that black verge
where the hills throw off their shaggy mantle of forest trees, and
either robe themselves in clouds or tower naked into the sky. The roar
of the Amonoosuck would have been too awful for endurance if only a
solitary man had listened, while the mountain stream talked with the
wind.

The adventurers, therefore, exchanged hospitable greetings, and welcomed
one another to the hut, where each man was the host, and all were the
guests of the whole company. They spread their individual supplies of
food on the flat surface of a rock, and partook of a general repast; at
the close of which, a sentiment of good fellowship was perceptible among
the party, though repressed by the idea, that the renewed search for the
Great Carbuncle must make them strangers again in the morning. Seven men
and one young woman, they warmed themselves together at the fire, which
extended its bright wall along the whole front of their wigwam. As they
observed the various and contrasted figures that made up the assemblage,
each man looking like a caricature of himself, in the unsteady light
that flickered over him, they came mutually to the conclusion, that
an odder society had never met, in city or wilderness, on mountain or
plain.

The eldest of the group, a tall, lean, weather-beaten man, some sixty
years of age, was clad in the skins of wild animals, whose fashion of
dress he did well to imitate, since the deer, the wolf, and the