A single candle lighted us. It could
scarce be called a housewarming; for there was, of course, no fire,
and with the two open doors and the open window gaping on the
night, like breaches in a fortress, it began to grow rapidly chill.
Talk ceased; nobody moved but the unhappy Chuchu, still in quest of
sofa-cushions, who tumbled complainingly among the trunks. It
required a certain happiness of disposition to look forward
hopefully, from so dismal a beginning, across the brief hours of
night, to the warm shining of to-morrow's sun.
But the hay arrived at last, and we turned, with our last spark of
courage, to the bedroom. We had improved the entrance, but it was
still a kind of rope-walking; and it would have been droll to see
us mounting, one after another, by candle-light, under the open
stars.
The western door--that which looked up the canyon, and through
which we entered by our bridge of flying plank--was still entire, a
handsome, panelled door, the most finished piece of carpentry in
Silverado. And the two lowest bunks next to this we roughly filled
with hay for that night's use. Through the opposite, or eastern-
looking gable, with its open door and window, a faint, disused
starshine came into the room like mist; and when we were once in
bed, we lay, awaiting sleep, in a haunted, incomplete obscurity.
At first the silence of the night was utter.
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