winter midnight
You may see whole platoons of snow cowering behind a bit of broken wall . The devious old road , hewn out of the mountain side , was full of it . Squadron upon squadron had struggled to escape by this line , when suddenly pursuit had ceased . A more desolate and dreary spot than Deadman 's Gulch in a winter midnight it is impossible to imagine . Yet Mr. Hiram Beeson elected to live there , the sole inhabitant . Away up the side of the North Mountain his little pine-log shanty projected from its single pane of glass a long , thin beam of light , and looked not altogether unlike a black beetle fastened to the hillside with a bright new pin . Within it sat Mr. Beeson himself , before a roaring fire , staring into its hot heart as if he had never before seen such a thing in all his life .