most graciously. In coming away I met my sweet Duchess of Gloucester, who engaged me for next Sunday to herself." Many years of life remained for the princesses as for Madame D'Arblay. She and the Princess Augusta, as well as the Landgravine of Hesse - Homburg, our Princess Elizabeth, are called away from earth in the same year, 1840. The Princess Augusta must have found little congeniality in the courts of her two brothers, and she just witnesses the beginning of her niece's reign, and the open in closing, to let our eyes dwell upon the peaceful figure of the Duchess of Gloucester. For eighteen years she lived happily with the good Duke. His mother had called Hannah More her friend, and his character had felt the benefits of pious influences. The Duke and Duchess gave much to charitable and educational objects, and lived as simply as their rank would permit. The Duchess survived the lover of her youth, the husband of her maturer years, dying in 1857, the last of this royal family of fifteen. been dashed to pieces, they concluded to call it a bridle-road, which was the easiest way to set the matter right, and quite in keeping with the philosophy of the mountains. So the wagons thereafter tumbled comfortably at their leisure. Our friends found "the Nation" hidden in isolated huts in the thickets among the ravines of the Soco and Ownolufta hills. These Cherokees number about fifteen hundred souls, and were said to have ten thousand acres under cultivation. But there was no sign of a village, no school, no gathering-place of any kind; the grass was knee-deep before the door of the little church which they had built years quarter to the wizard. The old man's 66 Nonsense. last for a week." This drought is going to the "North" to them, and the North to the Indians, as to the blacks in the South, is a great magician, who can give money, life-what it will. "My people," said Enola, the preacher, "have lived in these hills since before the white men came to But before they had reached the bottom the country, and have asked for nothing of the next chasm the clouds did actually but schools; but they have never got gather, and a heavy rain began to fall. them." The tribe are wretchedly poor: The shadows of the mountains lay like swindlers found the red man as easy a night over the valley, and the steep prey in North Carolina as in the West, clayey trail became so slippery that even and it is only since 1875 that they have the sure-footed mules slid and staggered obtained possession of the land on which on the edge of the precipice. Mrs. Muthey have lived for more than five hun-lock jumped to the ground, vowing that dred years. Crossing one of the heights, the Doctor's party came upon old Oosoweh, the conjurer, lying flat on his stomach. He had she would not trust her life to the goodwill of any donkey, and tramped on, the little Doctor valorously holding up her portly person, down the gulley made by a land-slide, until there was a rustle among the leaves, and a gray, sluggish, slimy length slowly trailed across the grass. It was a rattlesnake about five feet long. The poor woman fairly sat down in the mud and sobbed hysterically, while Morley and the Judge killed the monster. "I will not move a step further," she declared, vehemently. We must get on, my dear; it will be night in an hour," said the Doctor; "and this range appears to be utterly uninhabited." which was already knee-deep in rushing water. Night had fallen, and the darkness was unbroken except by the quick flashes of the lightning. "How absurd this will all seem to-morrow," said Sarah, laughing, with chattering teeth, "when we are eating our breakfast in dry clothes!" "I shall never eat breakfast again, I feel that," groaned Mrs. Mulock. • Hark! Do you hear the wolves ?" A prolonged yelp broke from the thicket, and the next minute a yellow beast "Except by snakes and wolves," inter- dashed in among them, followed by a rupted his wife. crouching figure. Morley tried to laugh. "The conjurer is shrewder than Old Probabilities himself. There was not a sign of rain when we were talking to him." "Nor would there have been if you had let him alone," said Sarah, tartly. "Thank God! It is a man, and he is white," cried the Doctor. "Hello! Come back, boys. My friend, is there any shelter for us in these mountains? We have lost our way." "An' wimmen ?" said the man, looking curiously at them. "Keep straight down the mountain, an' you'll find my house. I've got a little business to 'tend to, but I'll Sarah shrugged her shivering shoulders, be thar d'rectly." but said nothing. 66 'Business? In this hurricane?" ex"It is always wisest not toh tahmper claimed Mrs. Mulock. "What on earth-" with such people or their prejudices,' The man laughed. He was a slight said Judge Hixley, gravely. "I interfered young fellow, with white teeth and hononce with the Voodoo women, and I re-est eyes. 'It is a powerful lively shower, gretted it." He pulled off his coat, and that's a fact. You-uns had better keep glancing at Sarah and at Mrs. Mulock, close, single file. The trail's narrer, and wrapped it about the elder lady, and stood, ef you slip, you go into the 'Lufty a quar his teeth chattering, in his shirt sleeves. ter of a mile below. My wife 'll be glad "Oh, this is positively too much, to see you." He whistled to his dog, and Judge," cried Mrs. Mulock. "You will they disappeared. have neuralgia, or- Why doesn't that miserable Indian find the way out of this gorge? Why, where is the Indian ?" Everybody looked around, appalled. But Win-osteh had vanished. A roll of thunder broke from the black wall of cloud at the west, and reverberated sullenly from distant peak to peak. The next instant a blinding flash glittered about them, and the crash shook the gigantic trees against which they leaned. "The storm is upon us. It is no longer safe here," whispered the Doctor to Hixley. "Have you any idea how to get out of this wilderness? The trail ends here; it leads nowhere." The One After half an hour's perilous scrambling through swamps and along precipices, they reached the cabin, which was built on the shore of the little river. It was a sample of the better class of mountain huts. log walls gaped open in many places. Inside they were pasted over with newspapers; the ceilings hung with hanks of blue yarn, red peppers, bunches of herbs, and Indian baskets filled with the family clothing. The hut was divided by an open passage into chamber and kitchen. side of the latter was given up to a roaring fire of logs. A rosy, blue-eyed young woman was on her knees baking corn-bread among the ashes when they burst in on her. She stood up frightened, and laughing as if she had half a mind to cry. When she understood who they were, she welcomed them in a childish, eager fashion, took the women to the chamber (which turned out to be exactly like the kitchen), and sent the men up to the loft to put on some of her husband's dry clothes, while she went to work frying chicken and baking short-cake in the hot ashes. Mrs. Polly Leduc proved to be a most talkative hostess. Her tongue ran like a child's as they ate their supper. "You'll excuse me, Mistress Mulock," she said, "but it's two months since I've seen the face of woman, white or red. That's what ails the mountings-the awful lonesomeness. Whar I was brought up, five mile from hyar, it used to be a year that we'd not see a livin' face. But times is mendin' now. We hev Sunday-school an' pra'r some'ars every two months. Us folks goes twenty miles to 'em. Go in the mornin', an' stay all day. Exercises lasts till noon; then we have dinner, an' in the afternoon we kin see each other, and hear th' news. Last pra'r was powerful big; they was nigh onto twenty folks thar.' Mrs. Polly gave them in this gossip a very accurate glimpse of the habits of the mountaineers. They are, as a rule, wretchedly poor and ignorant. There are men of seventy in the recesses of these wildernesses who never saw a wheeled vehicle-men whose families live in a condition little above that of Digger Indians. Near the Tennessee line their huts are often merely sheds. They cook in a pot, and sitting around it, eat out of it with wooden spoons. At night a couple of boards are lifted in the floor, and disclose a hollow in the earth beneath filled with straw, in which the whole family kennel together. In the morning the boards are replaced, and all cares of housekeeping are over. But some of the genuine reverent qualities of the blood of their old Huguenot and Saxon ancestors lift the lives of these people far above the level of their surroundings. They are hospitable, honest, and, in their ignorant way, God-fearing. Their sole recreation is "goin' to preachin' or pra'r" two or three times a year, when some itinerant missionary penetrates the mountains. Nothing could be falser than the sketches which have been given of them that confound these uncouth but decent people with the Pikes or swaggering thieves and ruffians of the West. Miss Davidger went out with her hostess the next morning to help her milk. Mrs. Polly was mortified at her bare feet, for which she had made a covering of sheep-skin. "Thar's some things you r'ally want money fur," she said, "an' Hugh an' me hes hed none fur two year, 'xcept eight dollars he got fur a pint of balsam gum and some ginseng roots las' spring.” Living absolutely without money was a startling glimpse to Sarah of what life could be, reduced to its simplest conditions. She looked at Mrs. Polly, and then back to the house. "It can be done," she said, thoughtfully. "You have plenty to eat, you spin and weave your own clothes, and you could barter your corn for whatever else was needed. I saw the mountaineers doing that in Asheville.” “How kin we kerry the corn to barter when thar is no road? Hugh packed the ginseng on his back. Thar is a way—" She stopped, coloring hotly. "Never mind. When you come agin I hope I'll hev shoes, an' a cheer for you to sit on, an' baby a frock, pore little beggar!" her soft eyes filling with tears, which she tried to hide by dodging behind the cow. "Stuboy, Jin!" "Baby! I saw no baby," said Sarah. "No, ma'am. I lef' him in the loft. He's such a beautiful chile, I couldn't bar you-uns should see him in an ole wolfskin. When you come agin, he'll be like We've got a chance now." "I wonder what the chance is ?" Sarah asked the Judge, after they had bidden Hugh and Polly good-by that afternoon, and were riding down the steep trail. other folks. "I suspect it is a still for distilling whiskey." "You don't mean that that good honest fellow is a moonshiner ?" "He is a very good type of the moonshiners. They have absolutely no way of getting their crops to market except in the shape of whiskey. A railway through these wildernesses would cure illicit distilling sooner than thousands of revenue officers or preachers.” They reached the foot of the mountain at night-fall, and met there three men on horseback, riding Indian file. Hixley fell back, eying them eagerly. "Going toh Hugh Leduc's, gentlemen? The trail is dangerous. Better take daylight for it." "I know what I'm about," growled the leader--a grim, ill-conditioned fellow. "Who are they?" demanded Mrs. Mulock, as they disappeared in the twilight of the gorge. |