CHAPTER II.
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE DEER.
The cabin was a strongly built affair of rough logs, fifteen feet deep by thirty feet long. It was divided into two apartments on the ground floor, the first used as a general living-room and the second as a bedchamber. From the bedchamber a rude ladder ran to a loft, used as extra sleeping-quarters when the Radburys had company, and also as a storeroom. There were two windows in the sleeping-room below, and a window and a door in the general living-room. Each of the windows were shuttered with slabs of oak, secured, inside, by square bars of ash. All of the furniture excepting one bed, a table, and two chairs was home made, and consequently rather primitive in style, and built more for use than for ornamentation.
At one side of the living-room was a wide, open fireplace, and here, above the mantel-shelf, hung the old Mexican escopeta, or cavalry musket, which Dan intended to take along on his expedition to the spot where Ralph had brought down the deer. Taking the gun down, the youth saw to it that the
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