birds, new forms of insect life, and strange plants and flowers.
With every day, too, he was more deeply stirred by the changing
beauty of the mountains hidden at dawn with white mists, faintly
veiled through the day with an atmosphere that made him think of
Italy, and enriched by sunsets of startling beauty. But strongest of
all was the interest he found in the odd human mixture about
him-the simple, good-natured darkies who slouched past him,
magnificent in physique and picturesque with rags; occasional
foreigners just from Castle Garden, with the hope of the New
World still in their faces; and now and then a gaunt mountaineer
stalking awkwardly in the rear of the march toward civilization.
Gradually it had dawned upon him that this last, silent figure,
traced through Virginia, was closely linked by blood and speech
with the common people of England, and, moulded perhaps by the
influences of feudalism, was still strikingly unchanged; that now it
was the most distinctively national remnant on American soil, and
symbolized the development of the continent, and that with it must
go the last suggestions of the pioneers, with their hardy physiques,
their speech, their manners and customs, their simple architecture
and simple mode of life. It was soon plain to him, too, that a
change was being wrought at last-the change of destruction. The
older mountaineers, whose bewildered eyes watched the noisy
signs of an unintelligible civilization, were passing away. Of the
rest, some, sullen and restless, were selling their homesteads and
following the spirit of their forefathers into a new wilderness;
others, leaving their small farms in adjacent valleys to go to ruin,
were gaping idly about the public works, caught up only too easily
by the vicious current of the incoming tide. In a century the
mountaineers must be swept away, and their ignorance of the
tragic forces at work among them gave them an unconscious
pathos that touched Clayton deeply.
As he grew to know them, their historical importance yielded to a
genuine interest in the people themselves. They were densely
ignorant, to be sure; but they were natural, simple, and hospitable. Their sense of personal
worth was high, and their democracy-or aristocracy, since there was no distinction of caste-
absolute. For generations, son had lived like father in an isolation hardly credible. No influence
save such as shook the nation ever reached them. The Mexican war, slavery, and national
politics of the first half-century were still present issues, and each old man would give his rigid,
individual opinion sometimes with surprising humor and force. He went much among them, and
the rugged old couples whom he found in the cabin porches-so much alike at first-quickly
became distinct with a quaint individuality. Among young or old, however, he had found nothing
like the half-wild young creature he had met on the mountain that day. In her a type had
crossed his path-had driven him from it, in truth-that seemed unique and inexplicable. He had
been little more than amused at first, but a keen interest had been growing in him with every
thought of her. There was an indefinable charm about the girl. She gave a new and sudden
zest to his interest in mountain life; and while he worked, the incidents of the encounter on the
mountain came minutely back to him till he saw her again as she rode away, her supple figure
swaying with every movement of the beast, and dappled with quivering circles of sunlight from
the bushes, her face calm, but still flushed with color, and her yellow hair shaking about her
shoulders-not lustreless and flaxen, as hair was in the mountains, he remembered, but catching
the sunlight like gold.
Almost unconsciously he laid aside his pencil and leaned from his
window to lift his eyes to the dark mountain he had climbed that
day. The rude melody of an old-fashioned hymn was coming up
the glen, and he recognized the thin, quavering voice of an old
mountaineer, Uncle Tommy Brooks, as he was familiarly known,
whose cabin stood in the midst of the camp, a pathetic contrast to