ost and yet who had come back into his life in the
dazzling splendour of her own day-dreams--one of the rulers of the
world. He looked at her a moment and she seemed a being of another
planet. He looked again and saw the laughing school-girl, his playmate
on the red hills of his native state.

"Why so pensive, Jim?" she asked.

"It seems all a dream, Nan," he answered. "I'll rub my eyes and wake up
directly. I thought your New York house a miracle. This is fairyland."

"Perhaps it would be," she said, looking at him a moment through half
closed eyes, "if only the prince----"

A look of pain unconsciously clouded his face and the sentence was not
finished.

CHAPTER VII

THE LAND OF THE SKY

On the fourth day Nan planned a coaching party to ascend Mount
Mitchell, the highest peak in the Land of the Sky, the highest point of
ground this side the Rockies. She had taken this trip with Stuart
sixteen years before. She was then but fifteen, and he had just begun
to dangle at her heels. She did not tell him their destination, but
left him to discover for himself that they were travelling over the
same old quiet road.

The party consisted of half a dozen boys and girls whom Nan was
chaperoning, Stuart, the footman and coachman. The start was made at
sunrise. The morning was glorious, the air rich with the full breath of
a southern spring. The footman lifted the bugle to his lips, and its
music rang over the hills and broke into a thousand echoes as its notes
bounded upward from cliff to cliff. The whip cracked over the back of
four sleek horses and they were off, amid screams of laughter from the
youngsters.

Stuart felt his heart leap with the joy of youth. The rivers and
mountains, birds and fields of his native heath were calling once more,
and his soul answered with a cry!

At the foot of the first hill the coach suddenly stopped beside the
banks of the Swannanoa River.

Nan leaped to the ground, drew Stuart with her to the rear of the
coach, and raised her arms.

"Lift me up," she cried, laughing.

He placed his hands under her arms and with a leap and a cry of
laughter she was in the empty baggage rack.

"Now up with you!" she cried.

In a moment Stuart was seated snugly by her side and the big red coach
was rolling along the old road beside the banks of the laughing river.

"Now, sir," Nan whispered, "do you know where you are going?"

Stuart nodded.

"Where?" she asked, mischievously, as