"Eh, then! It maks an auld body's banes ache sair, siccan a road, as yon!" said the Scotchwoman, with a significant grimace, as the wagon paused a moment at the foot of a perpendicular ascent.
"I reckon ye wad nae ken whatten the Auld Country roads were med for, gin ye suld see them. They're nae like this, ony way."
The dear old creature had entered the United States through the St. Lawrence and the Lakes, and supposed Tarr Farm to be America. Miselle was so weak as to try to describe the aspect of things about her native city, and was evidently suspected of patriotic romancing for her pains.
But such magnificent views! Such glimpses of far mountain-peaks, seen through vistas of rounded hills! Such flashing streams, tumbling heels over head across the forest road in their haste to mingle with the blue waters of the Alleghany! Such wide stretches of country, as the road crept along the mountain-brow, or curved sinuously down to the far valley!
Pictures were there, as yet uncopied, that should hold Church breathless, with the pencil of the Andes and Niagara quivering in his fingers,—pictures that Turner might well cross the seas to look upon; but Miselle remembers them through a distracting mist of bodily terror and discomfort,—as some painter showed a dance of demons encircling a maiden's couch, while above it hung her first love-dream.
"Yon in the valley, where the wood looks so yaller, is a sulphur spring; an' here in the road's the place where I'm going to tip you all over," suddenly remarked Jamie, twisting himself round on the box to enjoy the consternation of his female passengers, while the wagon paused on the verge of a long gully, some six feet in depth, occupying the whole middle of the road.
"Wull ye get out?" continued he, addressing Miselle for the first time.
"Had we better?" asked she, tremulously.
"If you're easy scared. But I'm no going to upset, I'll promise you."
"Then I'll stay in," said Miselle, in the desperate courage of extreme cowardice; and the wagon went on, two wheels deep in the gully, crumbling down the clayey mud, two wheels high on the mountain-side, crashing through brush and over stones. And yet there was no upset.