The road before him now assumed the appearance of one long arbor. It was lined with tall hemlocks and banks of rhododendrons grew between. At the edges of the road giant ferns waved to and fro in the fresh morning air. Then, too, it seemed that the gorge was literally alive with song-birds. Apparently, from every tree birds were pouring forth their morning song. The traveler slackened his pace a bit, removed his hat and carried it in his hand as he went, enjoying all nature to the limit of his capacity. Now he lingered to pluck a bunch of trailing moss that hung over a fallen tree. This July morning he was comparatively rested in body and mind, hence he was keenly alert to everything in nature’s world, and it all brought happiness to his soul.
How the heart of the thin and pale-faced city clerk yearned for such a retreat as this, thought Waffington. How those of the torrid cities, who bake their feet against the blistering pavements and burn their faces against the scalding walls, would welcome this haven of rest among the wild flowers and singing birds. The gentle breezes, the babbling, splashing water falling into the deep pools and the shady recesses, would cool their fevered temples.
For three hours or more, perhaps, the traveler kept his way with uncovered head, enjoying the matchless beauties of nature’s world, with never a discordant note. At the noontide he came up before the spring in whose depth many a traveler before had quenched his burning thirst. It stood up in the rock, a basin cut out, moss-covered to its very brim. Crystal water overflowed the rim and trickled down through the moss and fell into the pool below. Paul Waffington knelt down and quenched his thirst in its depth, then seated himself on a log near by to rest and devour the “sweetcake” that Mrs. Tolson had given him in the early morning. He must be getting now within some ten miles of Blood Camp, he thought, munching the cake in silence. He wished that he might meet someone who could tell him the things that he wanted to know of Blood Camp. But he had met but one other traveler during the morning, and that was the mail-rider, who was going himself in the direction of Blood Camp at a fast gallop.
“What’s that!” he suddenly exclaimed, straining his ears to hear.
“Ho-de-o-do, ho-de-o-de; ho-de-o-do, ho-diddle-de-de!”
It was the echo of the voice of a boy coming down the gorge from the direction of Blood Camp.
“Ho-de-o-do, ho-de-o-de; ho-de-o-do, ho-diddle-de-de! Now watch at ye! Stan’ up here! Ef you stump your toe an’ fall down an’ throw me off, I’ll git down an’ git me a club an’ knock your dang head off! Git up. Moll!”
Just then an old gray horse came bouncing into view around the turn of the road, with a boy perched between its bony shoulders and projecting hip bones. The boy was perhaps thirteen years old, wore a rimless straw hat, with bare feet and lips stained with tobacco juice.
“Good morning, my boy,” saluted Paul Waffington.
“Whoa, Moll! Howdy,” he replied, as he drew up before the spring. “You’re takin’ a rest, air ye?”