It was about as nigh on to hell as any sample ye kin get here.

Now, mebbe you think I built that air fire?
Mebbe you'll allow the heat was just the nat'ral burning of that pit ?" "Certainly," said Lance, trying to see Flip's eyes, which were resolutely averted.
"Thet's whar you'd be lyin'! That yar heat kem out of the bowels of the yearth,--kem up like out of a chimbley or a blast, and kep up that yar fire.

And when she cools down a month after, and I got to strip her, there was a hole in the yearth, and a spring o' bilin', scaldin' water pourin' out of it ez big as your waist.

And right in the middle of it was this yer." He rose with the instinct of a skillful _raconteur_, and whisked from under his bunk a chamois leather bag, which he emptied on the table before them.

It contained a small fragment of native rock crystal, half-fused upon a petrified bit of pine.