Oconee, on Sunday, December 18, we met a negro well acquainted with
the roads and passes into North Carolina, who furnished us information
by which we traveled for two nights, recognizing on the second objects
which by his direction we avoided (like the house of Black Bill
McKinney), and going directly to that of friendly old Tom Handcock. The
first of these two nights we struggled up the foot-hills and outlying
spurs of the mountains, through an uninhabited waste of rolling barrens,
along an old stage road, long deserted, and in places impassable to a
saddle-mule. Lying down before morning, high up on the side of the
mountain, we fell asleep, to be awakened by thunder and lightning, and
to find torrents of hail and sleet beating upon our blankets. Chilled to
the bone, we ventured to build a small fire in a secluded place. After
dark and before abandoning our camp, we gathered quantities of wood,
stacking it upon the fire, which when we left it was a wild tower of
flame lighting up the whole mountain-side in the direction we had come,
and seeming, in some sort, to atone for a long succession of shivering
days in tireless bivouac. We followed the same stage road through the
scattering settlement of Casher's Valley in Jackson County, North
Carolina. A little farther on, two houses, of hewn logs, with verandas
and green blinds, just fitted the description we had received of the
home of old Tom Handcock. Knocking boldly at the door of the farther
one, we were soon in the presence of the loyal mountaineer. He and his
wife had been sleeping on a bed spread upon the floor before the fire.
Drawing this to one side, they heaped the chimney with green wood, and
were soon listening with genuine delight to the story of our adventures.

After breakfast next day, Tom, with his rifle, led us by a back road to
the house of "'Squire Larkin C. Hooper," a leading loyalist, whom we met
on the way, and together we proceeded to his house. Ragged and forlorn,
we were eagerly welcomed at his home by Hooper's invalid wife and
daughters. For several days we enjoyed a hospitality given as freely to
utter strangers as if we had been relatives of the family.

[Illustration: WE ARRIVE AT HEADEN'S.]

Here we learned of a party about to start through the mountains for East
Tennessee, guided by Emanuel Headen, who lived on the crest of the Blue
Ridge. Our friend Tom was to be one of the party, and other refugees
were coming over the Georgia border, w