join us, startin' when I telegraph him.

"Got it all worked out. You do as I tell you and you'll wear diamonds on
your stripes. Give me a note for that girl of yours, too."




CHAPTER VIII


The hills send down a buttress to the north; against it the Susquehanna
flows swift and straight for a little space, vainly chafing. Just where
the high ridge breaks sharp and steep to the river's edge there is a
grassy level, lulled by the sound of pleasant waters; there sleep the
dead of Abingdon.

Here is a fair and noble prospect, which in Italy or in California had
been world-famed; a beauty generous and gracious--valley, upland and
hill and curving river. The hills are checkered to squares, cleared
fields and green-black woods; inevitably the mind goes out to those who
wrought here when the forest was unbroken, and so comes back to read on
the headstones the names of the quiet dead: Hill, Barton, Clark, Green,
Camp, Hunt, Catlin, Giles, Sherwood, Tracy, Jewett, Lane, Gibson, Holmes,
Yates, Hopkins, Goodenow, Griswold, Steele. Something stirs at your
hair-roots--these are the names of the English. A few sturdy Dutch
names--Boyce, Steenburg, Van Lear--and a lonely French Mercereau; the
rest are unmixed English.

Not unnaturally you look next for an Episcopalian Church, finding none in