was late
in May. The 'leafage was luxuriant, and the mountains, wooded to
the tops, seemed overspread with great, shaggy rugs of green. The
woods were resonant with song-birds, and the dew dripped and
sparkled wherever a shaft of sunlight pierced the thick leaves.
Late violets hid shyly under canopies of May-apple; bunches of
blue and of white anemone nodded from under fallen trees, and
water ran like hidden music everywhere. Slowly the valley and the
sound of its life-the lowing of cattle, the clatter at the mines, the
songs of the negroes at work-sank beneath him. The chorus of
birds dwindled until only the cool, flute-like notes of a wood-
thrush rose faintly from below. Up he went, winding around great
oaks, fallen trunks, loose bowlders, and threatening cliffs until
light glimmered whitely between the boles of the trees. From a
gap where he paused to rest, a fire-scald " was visible close to the'
crest of the adjoining mountain. It was filled with the charred,
ghost-like trunks of trees that had been burned standing. Easter's
home must be near that, Clayton thought, and he turned toward it
by a path that ran along the top of the mountain. After a few
hundred yards the path swerved sharply through a dense thicket,
and Clayton stopped in wonder.

Some natural agent had hollowed the mountain, leaving a level
plateau of several acres. The earth had fallen away from a great
sombre cliff of solid rock, and clinging like a swallow's nest in a
cleft of this was the usual rude cabin of a mountaineer. The face of
the rock was dark with vines, and the cabin was protected as by a
fortress. But one way of approach was possible, and that straight to
the porch. From the cliff the vines had crept to roof and chimney,
and were waving their tendrils about a thin blue spiral of smoke.