A Knight of the Cumberland [4]
and sunk, and it was all the darker because the stars were not out. The path was steep and coiled downward like a wounded snake. In one place a tree had fallen across it, and to reach the next coil of the path below was dangerous. So I had the girls dismount and I led the gray horse down on his haunches. The mules refused to follow, which was rather unusual. I went back and from a safe distance in the rear I belabored them down. They cared neither for gray horse nor crooked path, but turned of their own devilish wills along the bushy mountain side. As I ran after them the gray horse started calmly on down and those two girls shrieked with laughter--they knew no better. First one way and then the other down the mountain went those mules, with me after them, through thick bushes, over logs, stumps and bowlders and holes--crossing the path a dozen times. What that path was there for never occurred to those long-eared half asses, whole fools, and by and by, when the girls tried to shoo them down they clambered around and above them and struck the path back up the mountain. The horse had gone down one way, the mules up the other, and there was no health in anything. The girls could not go up--so there was nothing to do but go down, which, hard as it was, was easier than going up. The path was not visible now. Once in a while I would stumble from it and crash through the bushes to the next coil below. Finally I went down, sliding one foot ahead all the time--knowing that when leaves rustled under that foot I was on the point of going astray. Sometimes I had to light a match to make sure of the way, and thus the ridiculous descent was made with those girls in high spirits behind. Indeed, the darker, rockier, steeper it got, the more they shrieked from pure joy--but I was anything than happy. It was dangerous. I didn't know the cliffs and high rocks we might skirt and an unlucky guidance might land us in the creek-bed far down. But the blessed stars came out, the moon peered over a farther mountain and on the last spur there was the gray horse browsing in the path--and the sound of running water not far below. Fortunately on the gray horse were the saddle-bags of the chattering infants who thought the whole thing a mighty lark. We reached the running water, struck a flock of geese and knew, in consequence, that humanity was somewhere near. A few turns of the creek and a beacon light shone below. The pales of a picket fence, the cheering outlines of a log-cabin came in view and at a peaked gate I shouted:
``Hello!''
You enter no mountaineer's yard without that announcing cry. It was mediaeval, the Blight said, positively--two lorn damsels, a benighted knight partially stripped of his armor by bush and sharp-edged rock, a gray palfrey (she didn't mention the impatient asses that had turned homeward) and she wished I had a horn to wind. I wanted a ``horn'' badly enough --but it was not the kind men wind. By and by we got a response:
``Hello!'' was the answer, as an opened door let out into the yard a broad band of light. Could we stay all night? The voice replied that the owner would see ``Pap.'' ``Pap'' seemed willing, and the boy opened the gate and into the house went the Blight and the little sister. Shortly, I followed.
There, all in one room, lighted by a huge wood-fire, rafters above, puncheon floor beneath--cane-bottomed chairs and two beds the only furniture-``pap,'' barefooted, the old mother in the chimney- corner with a pipe, strings of red pepper- pods, beans and herbs hanging around and above, a married daughter with a child at her breast, two or three children with yellow hair and bare feet all looking with all their eyes at the two visitors who had dropped upon them from another world. The Blight's eyes were brighter than usual--that was the only sign she gave that she was not in her own drawing- room. Apparently she saw nothing strange or unusual even, but there was really nothing that she did not see or hear and absorb, as few others than the Blight can.
Straightway,
``Hello!''
You enter no mountaineer's yard without that announcing cry. It was mediaeval, the Blight said, positively--two lorn damsels, a benighted knight partially stripped of his armor by bush and sharp-edged rock, a gray palfrey (she didn't mention the impatient asses that had turned homeward) and she wished I had a horn to wind. I wanted a ``horn'' badly enough --but it was not the kind men wind. By and by we got a response:
``Hello!'' was the answer, as an opened door let out into the yard a broad band of light. Could we stay all night? The voice replied that the owner would see ``Pap.'' ``Pap'' seemed willing, and the boy opened the gate and into the house went the Blight and the little sister. Shortly, I followed.
There, all in one room, lighted by a huge wood-fire, rafters above, puncheon floor beneath--cane-bottomed chairs and two beds the only furniture-``pap,'' barefooted, the old mother in the chimney- corner with a pipe, strings of red pepper- pods, beans and herbs hanging around and above, a married daughter with a child at her breast, two or three children with yellow hair and bare feet all looking with all their eyes at the two visitors who had dropped upon them from another world. The Blight's eyes were brighter than usual--that was the only sign she gave that she was not in her own drawing- room. Apparently she saw nothing strange or unusual even, but there was really nothing that she did not see or hear and absorb, as few others than the Blight can.
Straightway,