48 
WALDEN. 
a dirt floor for the most part, dank, clammy, and aguish, 
only here a board and there a board which would not 
bear removal. She lighted a lamp to show me the in¬ 
side of the roof and the walls, and also that the board floor 
extended under the bed, warning me not to step into 
the cellar, a sort of dust hole two feet deep. In her 
own words, they were “good boards overhead, good 
boards all around, and a good window,”—of two whole 
squares originally, only the cat had passed out that way 
lately. There was a stove, a bed, and a place to sit, an 
infant in the house where it was born, a silk parasol, 
gilt-framed looking-glass, and a patent new coffee mill 
nailed to an oak sapling, all told. The bargain was 
soon concluded, for James had in the mean while re¬ 
turned. I to pay four dollars and twenty-five cents to¬ 
night, he to vacate at five to-morrow morning, selling to 
nobody else meanwhile : I to take possession at six. 
It were well, he said, to be there early, and anticipate 
certain indistinct but wholly unjust claims on the score 
of ground rent and fuel. This he assured me was the 
only encumbrance. At six I passed him and his family 
on the road. One large bundle held their all,—bed, 
coffee-mill, looking-glass, hens, — all but the cat, she 
took to the woods and became a wild cat, and, as I 
learned afterward, trod in a trap set for woodchucks, 
and so became a dead cat at last. 
I took down this dwelling the same morning, drawing 
the nails, and removed it to the pond side by small cart¬ 
loads, spreading the boards on the grass there to bleach 
and warp back again in the sun. One early thrush 
gave me a note or two as I drove along the woodland 
path. I was informed treacherously by a young Patrick 
that neighbor Seeley, an Irishman, in the intervals of 
