As in many old farmhouses, there was a brick oven close beside the fireplace.
"Maybe we can light a fire in the oven," Addison said, and after breaking up several old boards we did succeed in kindling a blaze there.
The dreary place was not a little enlivened by the firelight.

We stood before it, warmed our fingers and munched the cold meat, doughnuts and cheese that the girls had put up for us.
But the smoke had disturbed a family of owls in the chimney.

Their dismal whooping and chortling, heard in the gloom of the night and the storm, were uncanny to say the least.

I wanted to go back to the barn, with the sheep; but Addison was more matter-of-fact.
"Oh, let them hoot!" he said.

"I am going to stay here and have a fire, if I can find anything to burn." While poking about at the far end of the room for more boards to break up, he found a battered old wardrobe with double doors and called to me to help him drag it in front of the oven.
"Going to smash that ?" I asked.
"No, going to sleep in it," said he.