They were in one of the great furnace-rooms in the cellar,--a very comfortable place that stormy night.

Two or three doors of the wide brick ovens were open, and the fire threw a ruddy glow over the stone floor, and shimmered into the dark recesses of the shadows, very home-like after the rain and mud without.

Lois seemed to think so, at any rate, for she had made a table of a store-box, put a white cloth on it, and was busy getting up a regular supper for her father,--down on her knees before the red coals, turning something on an iron plate, while some slices of ham sent up a cloud of juicy, hungry smell.
The old stoker had just finished slaking the out-fires, and was putting some blue plates on the table, gravely straightening them.

He had grown old, as Polston said,--Holmes saw, stooped much, with a low, hacking cough; his coarse clothes were curiously clean: that was to please Lois, of course.

She put the ham on the table, and some bubbling coffee, and then, from a hickory board in front of the fire, took off, with a jerk, brown, flaky slices of Virginia johnny-cake.
"Ther' yoh are, father, hot 'n' hot," with her face on fire,--"ther'-- yoh--are,--coaxin' to be eatin' .-- Why, Mr.Holmes! Father! Now, ef yoh jes' hedn't hed yer supper ?" She came up, coaxingly.