On opening the door of the cabin, they found that the woodsman, or more properly the settler as we shall again term him, making a virtue of necessity, had somewhat cheered its interior.  A number of fine logs, sufficient to last throughout the night had been heaped upon the hearth, and these, crackling and fizzing, and emitting sparks in all the burly of a hickory wood-fire, gave promise of a night of comparative comfort.  Ensconced in the farther corner of the chimney, the settler had already taken his seat, and, regardless of the entrance of the strangers, (with his elbows resting on his knees, and his face buried in his large palms), kept his eyes fixed upon the fire, as if with a sullen determination neither to speak nor suffer himself to be questioned.  But the Aid-de-Camp was by no means disposed to humour him in his fancy.  The idea of passing some eight or ten consecutive hours in company with two fellow beings, without calling into full play the bump of loquacity, with which nature had largely endowed him, was, in his view, little better than the evil from which his perseverance had just enabled him to escape.  Making himself perfectly at home, he unbuckled the wet blanket from his loins, and spreading it, with that of Gerald, to dry upon the rude floor before the fire, drew forward a heavy uncouth looking table, (which, with two or three equally unpolished chairs, formed the whole of the furniture), and deposited thereon the wallet or haversack in which remained a portion of provision.  He then secured the last vacant chair, and taking up a position on the right of the table which lay between himself and Gerald, let it fall upon the dry clay hearth, with a violence that caused the settler to quit his attitude of abstraction for one of anger and surprise.

“Sorry to disturb you, friend,” he said; “but these chairs of yours are so curst heavy, there’s no handling them decently; specially with cold fingers.”

“Beggars, I reckon, have no right to be choosers,” returned the settler; “the chairs is quite good enough for me—­and no one axed you to sit on em.”

“I’ll tell you what it is, old cock,” continued the Aid-de-Camp, edging his seat closer, and giving his host a smart friendly slap upon the thigh, “this dull life of yours don’t much improve your temper.  Why, as I am a true Tennessee man, bred and born, I never set eyes upon such a crab apple in all my life—­you’d turn a whole dairy of the sweetest milk that ever came from prairie grass sour in less than no time.  I take it, you must be crossed in love old boy, eh?”

“Crossed in hell,” returned the settler, savagely.  “I reckon as how it don’t consarn you whether I look sour or sweet—­what you want is a night’s lodgin’, and you’ve got it, so don’t trouble me no more.”

“Very sorry, but I shall,” said Jackson, secretly congratulating himself that, now he had got the tongue of his host in motion, he had a fair chance of keeping it so.  “I must trouble you for some bread, and whatever else your larder may afford.  I’ll pay you honestly for it, friend.”