Owing to the difficulties of the passage through the cave of the bats, and the utter barrenness of the rocky half-acre which lay at its other end, the three soldiers never entered it again during the fall and winter which followed its discovery. The two blocks of isinglass which they had brought away on their first visit were ample for their purpose; and as soon as they had secured their supply of fat pine-knots for light in the long winter evenings, they set about constructing two windows to take the place of the sliding boards which closed those openings in the cold, snowy days. It is true, they could not look out through the new windows, but much light could enter where all had been darkness before. Time was nothing to the soldiers in these late autumn days; and, indeed, the more of it they could spend on any work they undertook, the more such work contributed to their contentment and happiness. They wished to have their windows ornamental as well as useful; and it was Philip\'s suggestion that they should try an imitation of stained glass.
They had some of the carbine cartridges left; and as they no longer killed any creatures, the bullets would supply them with lead to unite the small pieces of isinglass and outline their designs. One of the mica blocks chanced to be of a pale-green color, and they made many experiments to produce reds and blues. Oxide of iron, or the common red iron-rust, gave a rich carmine powder, which, mixed with the white of an egg, adhered to the inner side of the small panes. They found a few dried huckleberries, from which they extracted a strong blue by boiling. They could procure yellow only by beating a small bit of gold to the thinnest leaf, which they pasted upon the flake of mica. The reds and blues as they applied them were only water-colors; but the inner side of the glass was not exposed to the rain. After the one square window, which looked toward the Cove and consequently let in the afternoon sun, was finished in a fantastic arrangement of the three rich colors, bordered by pale green, it was decided, with great enthusiasm, to reproduce in the opposite window their dear old flag with its thirty-five stars. To do this, they cut away the logs on one side until they had doubled the area of the opening. They managed to stiffen the frame on the inner side with strips of dogwood, which made a single cross against the light, leaving the blue field of stars unobstructed.
It was a great comfort to their patriotic hearts to see the sun glowing on their United States window when they awoke in the morning, or to see the ruddy firelight dancing on the old flag, if one of them came in from the mill or the branch in the evening. In fact, when this work was finished, the three soldiers, wrapped in their faded blue overcoats, were never tired of walking about outside their house, in the chilly November evenings, to admire their first art-work illuminated by the torch-light within. Their tough, bare feet, insensible to the sharp stones and the gray hoar-frost, wore away the withered grass opposite to each of their stained-glass windows; but the patch of trodden earth outside the window which showed the glowing stripes and gleaming stars of the old flag was much the larger.
Otherwise their prospects for the winter were by no means as brilliant as their windows; for besides the failure in the potato crop, the white grubs had made sad havoc with their corn in two successive plantings, and the yield in October had been alarmingly light. Even the chestnuts had been subject to a blight; and altogether it was what the farmers would call "a bad year." The fowls had increased to an alarming extent, considering the necessity of feeding so many, and as winter approached their eggs were fewer than ever. The case was not so bad that it would be necessary to shorten their rations, as they had done before the harvest of the first year; but with so many mouths to feed, there was danger that they would find themselves without seed for the next planting. Then, too, there was a very grave danger that before spring these stubborn vegetarians would be forced to resort to broiled chicken, spiced with gunpowder, which was nearly as repulsive to their minds as leaving the mountain and going down into a triumphant Confederacy.
The bear, at least, would require no feeding, and with the very first snow old Tumbler disappeared as usual, making the soldiers rather wish that, for this particular winter, hibernation could be practised by human animals as well as by bears.
After Christmas the weather became unusually cold, and the winds swept with terrific force across the top of the mountain. The snow was so deep that the path they dug to the mill was banked above their heads as they walked in it, and the mill itself showed only its half-roof of shingles and its long water-trough above the surface of the snow. From the trough huge icicles were pendent, and it was ornamented with great curves of snow; and when Philip set the wheels in motion, a gray dust rose above the bank, and the whir of the grinding as heard at the house was subdued and muffled like the very ghost of a sound. The soldiers dug open spaces to give light, outside the stained-glass windows, and through these the evening firelight repeated the gorgeous colors on the snow.
From the path to the mill they dug a branch to the forge, and tunneled a passage to the water, from which they broke the ice every day. Short as was their supply of corn, they were obliged to feed it to the fowls with a lavish hand as long as the deep snow remained. This necessity kept them busy shelling the ears by the fire in the warm house, after they had brought them in from the mill or the forge, and half a gunny-sack of corn was thrown out on the snow at the morning and evening feeding. Since the hut of the old man of the mountain had been made into a forge, the fowls had roosted in the branches of the old chestnuts, and had got on very well, even in the winters that were past. With full crops, they seemed to be thriving equally well during the severe cold which attended the period of deep snow.
The 15th of January in the new year, which was 1871, was the first of a four days\' thaw. The sun beamed with unusual heat on the mountain, and under his rays the snow rapidly disappeared, and the ground came to light again with its store of dry seeds. The three-pronged tracks of the fowls were printed everywhere in the soft top-soil, where they scampered about in pursuit of grubs and worms. On the fourth day the avalanche fell from the great boulder into the Cove, with the usual midwinter crashes and reverberations, which reminded Philip of his narrow escape the winter before.
On the evening of this fourth day the thaw was followed by a light rain, which froze as it fell, and developed into a regular ice-storm during the night. When the three soldiers looked out on the morning of the 19th, they found their house coated with ice, and the mountain-top a scene of glittering enchantment. Every tree and bush was coated with a transparent armor of glass. The lithe limbs of the birches and young chestnuts were bent downward in graceful curves by the weight of the ice, which, under the rays of the rising sun, guttered and scintillated with all the colors of the rainbow. Every rock and stone had its separate casing, and every weed and blade of grass was stiffened with a tiny shining overcoat. The stalks on the plantation stood up like a glittering field of pikes.
Despite the difficulty of walking over the uneven ground and the slippery rocks, they made their way, not without occasional falls, to the western side of the plateau to observe the effect in the Cove. Philip was in raptures over the prismatic variety of colors, picking out and naming the tints with a childish glee and with a subtle appreciation of color that far outran the limited vision of his comrades, and made them think that Sherman Territory had possibly defrauded the world below of a first-rate painter.
As they turned back toward the house, after their first outburst of enthusiasm over the beauties of the ice-storm, Bromley remarked that it was strange they had not been awakened as usual by the crowing of the cocks. Indeed, the stillness of the hour was remarkable. It was strange that while they had lain in their bunks after daybreak they had not heard the cocks answering one ............