ey
ketch ye, Polly Ann, just you go along and pretend to be happy, and
tear off a snatch of your dress now and then, if you get a chance. It
wouldn't take me but a little time to run into Harrodstown or Boone's
Station from here, and fetch a party to follow ye."

Two days went by,--two days of strain in sunlight, and of watching and
fitful sleep in darkness. But the Wilderness Trail was deserted. Here
and there a lean-to--silent remnant of the year gone by--spoke of the
little bands of emigrants which had once made their way so cheerfully to
the new country. Again it was a child's doll, the rags of it beaten
by the weather to a rusty hue. Every hour that we progressed seemed to
justify the sagacity and boldness of Tom's plan, nor did it appear to
have entered a painted skull that a white man would have the hardihood
to try the trail this year. There were neither signs nor sounds save
Nature's own, the hoot of the wood-owl, the distant bark of a mountain
wolf, the whir of a partridge as she left her brood. At length we could
stand no more the repression that silence and watching put upon us, and
when a rotten bank gave way and flung Polly Ann and the sorrel mare into
a creek, even Weldon smiled as we pulled her, bedraggled and laughing,
from the muddy water. This was after we had ferried the Rockcastle
River.

Our trace rose and fell over height and valley, until we knew that we
were come to a wonderland at last. We stood one evening on a spur as the
setting sun flooded the natural park below us with a crystal light and,
striking a tall sycamore, turned its green to gold. We were now on the
hills whence the water ran down to nourish the fat land, and I could
scarce believe that the garden spot on which our eyes feasted could be
the scene of the blood and suffering of which we had heard. Here at last
was the fairyland of my childhood, the country beyond the Blue Wall.

We went down the river that led into it, with awes as though we were
trespassers against God Himself,--as though He had made it too beautiful
and too fruitful for the toilers of this earth. And you who read this
an hundred years hence may not believe the marvels of it to the pioneer,
and in particular to one born and bred in the scanty, hard soil of the
mountains. Nature had made it for her park,--ay, and scented it with her
own perfumes. Giant trees, which had watched generations come and go,
some of which mayhap had been saplings when the Norman came to