Beadle's Dime Novels No. 96: Little Moccasin — page 9: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

voices dted away, one after another, in low whtispersy With long pauses of deathlike stillness, and their circle had gradu- ally contracted to half the original size: when they first gath- ered about«#he fire and hung up their clothes to dry, after such & meal as only the lumbermen of the Pine-tree State are equal to, after a long tramp through the snow. Most of these rough men were sitting now, each with a hand upon his neighbor's knee, or with one arm about his neck, in that kind of gener- ous, warm-hearted fellowship which opin out of hardship, trial and adventure. Even the boldest—and there were bold men among that crew, men who had risked their lives in hunting and river- driving, day after day, and year after year, without once think- ing of death—even the boldest felt a thrill now and then, as the stories went on, and they looked up through a large open- ing in the roof, which was intended to carry off the smoke, and up—up—into the vast overhanging midnight sky, crowded with stars of uncommon size, and listened to the strange, heavy, whispering stillness that came and went, and seemed to fill. earth and sky, after the long, dreary snow-storm which had continued night and day for nearly a week—putting a stop to all their lumbering operations, blocking up all the high- - ways and cattle-paths, and overloading the huge hemlocks and stately pines, till their branches were bent down and arched over, so that, look whege you would, nothing but long avenues and booths and bowers, blossoming all over like the hawthorn hedges of our mother country, were to be seen—but motion- - Jess and silent as a grave-yard. Though built of large, rough logs, covered in with hemlock and spruce branches, and thoroughly strengthened in every Way, such’ was the prodigious weight of snow upon the roof under which they were now sitting, that not a few troubled looks were turned up to it, from time to time, as they sat there, crowded together, listening to these wild stories, and catching their breath at long intervals. And though their sweet-smell- ing cedar-beds were piled three feet high, and richer, by far, to the stalwart logger than the three-piled velvet of Genoa to the unwearied and listless, they were almost afraid to turn in for the night, and yet were unwilling to acknowledge the fear they felt, even to themselves. conicloooks.com