Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 3, 1895 - Travels and Excursions, Volume II

THE ACT OF SQUATTING
our lodging, so we betook ourselves to the black-
smith's forge across the platform. If the platform be
taken as a stage, and the out-curving margin of the
dump to represent the line of the footlights, then our
house would be the first wing on the actor's left, and
this blacksmith's forge, although no match for it in
size, the foremost on the right. It was a low, brown
cottage, planted close against the hill, and overhung
by the fohage and peeling boughs of a madrona
thicket. Within, it was full of dead leaves and
mountain dust and rubbish from the mine. But
we soon had a good fire brightly blazing, and sat close
about it on impromptu seats. Chuchu, the slave
of sofa-cushions, whimpered for a softer bed; but
the rest of us were greatly revived and comforted by
that good creature — fire, which gives us warmth and
light and companionable sounds, and colours up the
emptiest building with better than frescoes. For a
while it was even pleasant in the forge, with the
blaze in the midst, and a look over our shoulders on
the woods and mountains where the day was dying
like a dolphin.
It was between seven and eight before Hanson
arrived, with a waggonful of our effects and two of
his wife's relatives to lend him a hand. The elder
showed surprising strength. He would pick up a
huge packing-case full of books, of all things, swing
it on his shoulder, and away up the two crazy ladders
and the break-neck spout of rolHng mineral, familiarly
termed a path, that led from the cart-track to our
house. Even for a man unburthened, the ascent was
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