The
arrangements of the whole cabin showed that some one had built it with a
view to passing in seclusion a few days at a time without forsaking the
simpler amenities of civilized life; and it was clear that that "some one"
was a woman. What interested Ford chiefly for the moment was the discovery
of a sealed glass jar of water, from which he was able to slake his twenty
hours' thirst.
Returning to the room in which he had slept, he drew back the green silk
curtain covering the north light in order to take his bearings. As he had
guessed on the previous night, the slope on which the cabin was perched
broke steeply down into a wooded gorge, beyond which the lower hills
rolled in decreasing magnitude to the shore of Champlain, visible from
this point of view in glimpses, less as an inland sea than like a chain of
lakelets. Sunrise over Vermont flooded the waters with tints of rose and
saffron, but made of the Green Mountains a long, gigantic mass of
purple-black twisting its jagged outline toward the north into the Hog's
Back and the Camel's Hump with a kind of monstrous grace. To the east, in
New York, the Adirondacks, with the sunlight full upon them, shot up
jade-colored peaks into the electric blue--the scarred pyramid of Graytop
standing forth dark, detached, and alone, like a battered veteran
sentinel.
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