`` We shall get our winter 's wood cheap , '' quoth Tabitha . The good work being thus commenced , Peter beat down all before him , smiting and hewing at the joints and timbers , unclenching spike-nails , ripping and tearing away boards , with a tremendous racket from morning till night . He took care , however , to leave the outside shell of the house untouched , so that the neighbors might not suspect what was going on . Never , in any of his vagaries , though each had made him happy while it lasted , had Peter been happier than now . Perhaps , after all , there was something in Peter Goldthwaite 's turn of mind which brought him an inward recompense for all the external evil that it caused . If he were poor , ill-clad , even hungry and exposed , as it were , to be utterly annihilated by a precipice of impending ruin , yet only his body remained in these miserable circumstances , while his aspiring soul enjoyed the sunshine of a bright futurity . It was his nature to be always young , and the tendency of his mode of life to keep him so . Gray hairs were nothing -- no , nor wrinkles nor infirmity ; he might look old , indeed , and be somewhat disagreeably connected with a gaunt old figure much the worse for wear , but the true , the essential Peter was a young man of high hopes just entering on the world . At the kindling of each new fire his burnt-out youth rose afresh from the old embers and ashes . It rose exulting now . Having lived thus long -- not too long , but just to the right age -- a susceptible bachelor with warm and tender dreams , he resolved , so soon as the hidden gold should flash to light , to go a-wooing and win the love of the fairest maid in town . What heart could resist him ? Happy Peter Goldthwaite ! Every evening -- as Peter had long absented himself from his former lounging-places at insurance offices , news-rooms , and book-stores , and as the honor of his company was seldom requested in private circles -- he and Tabitha used to sit down sociably by the kitchen hearth . This was always heaped plentifully with the rubbish of his day 's labor . As the foundation of the fire there would be a goodly-sized back-log of red oak , which after being sheltered from rain or damp above a century still hissed with the heat and distilled streams of water from each end , as if the tree had been cut down within a week or two . Next there were large sticks , sound , black and heavy , which had lost the principle of decay and were indestructible except by fire , wherein they glowed like red-hot bars of iron . On this solid basis Tabitha would rear a lighter structure , composed of the splinters of door-panels , ornamented mouldings , and such quick combustibles , which caught like straw and threw a brilliant blaze high up the spacious flue , making its sooty sides visible almost to the chimney-top . Meantime , the gloom of the old kitchen would be chased out of the cobwebbed corners and away from the dusky cross-beams overhead , and driven nobody could tell whither , while Peter smiled like a gladsome man and Tabitha seemed a picture of comfortable age . All this , of course , was but an emblem of the bright fortune which the destruction of the house would shed upon its occupants .
While the dry pine was flaming and crackling like an irregular discharge of fairy-musketry , XXXXX sat looking and listening in a pleasant state of excitement ; but when the brief blaze and uproar were succeeded by the dark-red glow , the substantial heat and the deep singing sound which were to last throughout the evening , his humor became talkative .
Goldthwaite Peter back-log emblem fire futurity kindling night right whither