Hence, no joy of after life--nothing that the world has now to give--can equal that joyous sense of freedom and full possession which came over me on Saturday afternoons, when I started off on a tramp with the world all before me,--the mighty, unexplored world of mysteries and possibilities, bounded only by the horizon. Ignorant alike of all science, neither botanist nor naturalist, I was studying at firsthand all that lore out of which science is made. Every plant and flower had a familiar face to me, and said something to my imagination. I knew where each was to be found, its time of coming and going, and met them year after year as returning friends.
So it was with joyous freedom that we boys ram bled off with Sam this afternoon, intent to find the Devil's Den. It was a ledge of granite rocks rising in the midst of a grove of pines and white birches. The ground was yellow and slippery with the fallen needles of the pines of other days, and the glistening white stems of the birches shone through the shadows like ivory pillars. Underneath the great granite ledges, all sorts of roots and plants grappled and kept foothold; and whole armies of wild raspberries matured their fruit, rounder and juicier for growing in the shade.
In one place yawned a great rift, or cavern, as if the rocks had been violently twisted and wrenched apart, and a mighty bowlder lodging in the rift had roofed it over, making a cavern of most seductive darkness and depth. This was the Devil's Den; and after we had picked our pail full of berries, we sat down there to rest.
“Sam, do you suppose the Devil ever was here?” said I. “What do they call this his den for?”
“Massy, child! that 'are was in old witch times. There used to be witch meetins' held here, and awful doins'; they used to have witch sabba' days and witch sacraments, and sell their souls to the old boy.”
“Wal, sure enough; what was it for? I can't make out that the Devil ever gin 'em any thing, any on 'em. They warn't no richer, nor didn't get no more'n this world than the rest; and they was took and hung; and then ef they went to torment after that, they hed a pretty bad bargain on't, I say.”
“Well, people don't do such things any more, do they?” said I.