The interior of his “dug-out” was more like an Indian kik-willy (ancient Indian house) than the dwelling of a modern Anglo-Saxon.  The walls were composed of the rough timbers, and the chinks were stuffed with rags and old newspapers.  A few smoke-begrimed pictures were hanging on the walls, and a calendar of the year 1881 still glared forth in all its ancient uselessness, leading one back into a past decade.  If he broke the rules of etiquette by eating with his knife, he also smashed those of modesty by utilizing his air-tight heater as a cuspidor, for it was streaked white with evaporated saliva.

How this crude bud ever anticipated blooming out into a society blossom was a conundrum.  Perhaps he had some secret method buried in the same box with his hoarded coin.  His long evenings were passed reading the Family Herald and Weekly Star and the Ashcroft Journal by candle-light; for those were the only papers he would subscribe for.  His bed consisted of, first, boards, then straw, then sacking; and it had remained so long without being frayed out that it had become packed as hard as terra firma.  His blankets had not seen the light of day, nor enjoyed the fresh cool breezes for many long years.  His one window was opaque with the smoke of many years’ accumulation.  Although his chickens had a coop of their own where they roosted at night, they ran about the floor of his “dug-out” in the daytime looking for crumbs that fell from the poor man’s table; and his cat, through years of criminal impunity, would sit on the table at mealtime and help himself to the victuals just as the spirit moved him.  A stump had been left standing when the cabin was built; it had been hewn at the appropriate elevation of a chair.  This was near his air-tight heater, and his favorite position was to sit there with his feet propped against the stove and smoke by candle-light; and sometimes he would sit in the dark to save candles.  His other furniture consisted of “Reindeer” brand condensed milk and blue-mottled soap boxes, which he had acquired at times from F.W.  Foster’s general store at Clinton.

Hard Times Hance was living on first principles; but then, if a man wishes to save any coin in this world he must make great personal sacrifices; and so he was perfectly happy in his temporary aboriginal condition.  There were no restrictions upon him.  He was even outside the circumference of any ministerial jurisdiction, and had never been cautioned about the hereafter.  Like an Indian, he moved just as the impulse seized him.  How this man expected to submit to the personal restrictions and embargoes imposed by modern fashions and society was known only to himself.  The song of the forest had been his only concert; the whisper of the creek his sole heart companion.  When occasion permitted he would wander the entire day on the high mountains, at the end of his trail, hunting for game, and little caring whether he found it or not, so long as he had the wild and congenial environs to admire and embrace.  What was city life in comparison with this?