The wind howled, the
thunder roared and almost like cannon-fire were the successive crashes
of lightning among the trees out there in the path of fury.
There were lights in several of the windows opening upon the porch;
the wooden shutters not only were ajar but were banging savagely
against the walls. Even in the dim, grim light shed by the lantern he
could see that the building was of an age far beyond the ken of any
living man. He recalled the words of the informing sign-post:
"Established in 1798." One hundred and eighteen years old, and still
baffling the assaults of all the elements in a region where they were
never timid!
It may, in all truth, be a "shindy," thought he, but it had led a
gallant life.
The broad, thick weather-boarding, overlapping in layers, was brown
with age and smooth with the polishing of time and the backs, no
doubt, of countless loiterers who had come and gone in the making of
the narrative that Hart's Tavern could relate. The porch itself, while
old, was comparatively modern; it did not belong to the century in
which the inn itself was built, for in those far-off days men did not
waste time, timber or thought on the unnecessary. While the planks in
the floor were worn and the uprights battered and whittled out of
their pristine shapeliness, they were but grandchildren to the parent
building to which they clung.
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