The farther he plunges into the spice-laden wilderness the more is he enchanted with his surroundings. Picture a cleft in the mountain whose sides drop almost sheer to a gorge barely wide enough to accommodate a wood road and a brook that parallels and often encroaches upon it. Tall pines interlace and shut out the direct rays of the sun and every now and then a cascade comes tumbling somewhere aloft and plunges into a broad, pebble-lined basin.
As Ashley sits by one of these pools, his wading boots plunged deep in the crystal liquid, and pulls lazily on a briar pipe, the reader is offered the opportunity of becoming better acquainted with him.
He is a prepossessing young fellow of something like 27, medium height and rather well built. Blue eyes and an aggressive nose, on which gold-bowed eyeglasses are airily perched, are characteristics of a face which has always been a passport for its owner into all society worth cultivating. A well-shaped head is adorned with a profusion of blond curls, supplemented by a mustache of silken texture and golden hue, which its possessor is fond of twisting when he is in a blithesome humor, which is often, and of tugging at savagely when in a reflective mood, which is infrequent.
Ashley is noted among his friends for chronic good humor and unbounded confidence in his own abilities. He is one of the brightest all-round writers on the New York Hemisphere, and he knows it. The best of it is, City Editor Ricker also knows it. All the office sings of his exploits and “beats” and does their author reverence. Jack always calls himself a newspaper man. That is the sensible title. Yet he might wear the name of journalist much more worthily.
Ashley is in Vermont for his health. Five years of continuous hustling on a big New York daily has necessitated a breathing spell. He was telling Mr. Ricker that his “wheels were all run down and needed repairing,” and that he believed he would take his vacation early this year.
“I’ll tell you where you want to go,” volunteered the city editor, who was “raised” among the Green Mountains and served his apprenticeship gathering locals on a Burlington weekly.
“All right; let’s have it.”
“Take three weeks off and go up into Vermont.”
“Vermont—Vermont—where’s Vermont? O, yes, that green daub on the map of New England. Railroad run through there?”
“Now, see here, Jack,” retorted Ricker, “you’re not so confoundedly ignorant as you imply. That’s the trouble with you New Yorkers who were born and bred here. You consider everything above the Harlem River a jay community. You’re a sight more provincial than half the inhabitants of rural New England.”