"Can't you stop the casks leaking so much," inquired Felix Brush, who had been a parson in Missouri, and claimed that he had never been "unfrocked."
"Not as long as Vose has charge of the freight----"
At that instant a dull but resounding thump was heard on the roof overhead. It shook every log in the structure, checked speech and caused each man to look wonderingly at his neighbor.
"The mountain has fell on us!" exclaimed Ike Hoe in a husky whisper.
"If it was the mountain," said Budge Isham, slightly raising his voice, as the courage of the party came back; "none of us would be able to tell of it."
"Then it's a rock--well, I'm blessed! the thing is moving!"
Something was certainly astir in the mass of snow overhead.
"I guess it's a angel that has lost its way," submitted Hoe.
"More likely it's a grizzly b'ar that's stumbled off the rocks--"
But all these speculations were scattered to the winds by the sound of a voice muffled and seemingly far away, which came to them through the storm:
WHAT THE BLIZZARD BROUGHT TO NEW CONSTANTINOPLE
A moment after the hail was heard from the roof, the muffled noise which accompanied it ceased. The stranger groping about in the snowy gloom had stepped off the roof into the huge drift outside the Heavenly Bower, and a minute later, lifted the latch of the door and pushed in among the astonished miners. They saw the figure of a sturdy man holding something in his arms, so wrapped round with blankets and coverings that no one could tell its nature. He stamped the snow from his boots, shook himself like a shaggy dog, then walked heavily to the chair which Budge Isham placed near the fire for him, and almost fell into it.
"Good evening, friends," he said in a grave voice; "It was no fault of mine that I tried at first to enter by the roof."
"When I built the Heavenly Bower," replied Landlord Ortigies; "I meant to place a door up there, but there wasn't anybody in New Constantinople with enough sense to know how to do it. I 'spose you was looking fur it, stranger."
"No," was the reply, "I wasn't looking for anything; I was just walking, walking through the storm, not knowing or caring where I went. I can't say how far I came, but it must have been a number of miles. I was still plodding on, when I set my foot on vacancy and down I went."