Channing had spent the night before at Storm, to be in time for a sunrise start, and he appeared at breakfast in a costume which he and Farwell had evolved as suitable for mountaineering; an affair of riding-boots, pale corduroy breeches, flannel shirt, and a silk handkerchief knotted becomingly about the throat. He was disconcerted to discover that the suit-case of other appropriate garments he had brought with him must be left behind, his luggage being finally reduced to a package of handkerchiefs and a toothbrush.
"But we are to be gone at least a week!" he pleaded unhappily. "Surely a change of linen—"
"There'll be a creek handy," said Jacqueline, "and I'm taking a cake of soap in my bundle. We can't be bothered with luggage."
When he saw the mules that were to convey them from the mountain town at which the railroad left them, up to their final destination, he realized the undesirability of luggage. He also envied the other two their horsemanship.
But the mule proved easier riding than he had expected. They traveled at a slow, steady lope that ate up the miles imperceptibly, through wild and beautiful country, always climbing; passing at first occasional groups of unpainted pine houses which gave way, as they penetrated farther into the hills, to rough log cabins, growing fewer and farther apart. These had a bare, singularly unkempt look; and although many of them were so old as to be tumbledown, they did not fit, somehow, into their surroundings. It was as if nature had never yet accepted man and his works, still tolerated him under protest, a blot upon her loveliness.
Channing commented upon this. "Why are there no vines and flowers about, nothing to make these pitiful places look as if people lived in them?"
"Folks is too busy wrestin' a livin' out of the bare yearth to pretty-up much," explained the Apostle.
"But why stay here at all? Why not go down into the valleys, where land is more fertile?"
The other answered quietly, "Folks that have lived on the mounting-top ain't never content to be cooped up in the valleys, son."
"If you think the outsides are pitiful," exclaimed Philip, "wait till you see the insides! I was only a child when we lived up here, but I have never forgotten. I ought to have come back long ago. Frankly, I have shirked it."