By eight o'clock I was fast asleep in a workmen's boarding-house, and at sunrise on the next morning I was on the road which turns sharply up the mountain-side. A dense mist lay upon the valley, but my way soon led me up to the freer air, until, upon the summit of a ridge, I reached the clear sunshine, and could see the emerging ranges of hills to the east and south and the white mist resting motionless on the valley below.
Up and up I climbed into higher altitudes. Each elevation appeared, as I approached it, the topmost crest of the mountain, and yet I gained it only to find another rough steep beyond.
There could scarcely have been a sharper contrast with the journey of the previous day. The graceful undulations of rich farm-lands and the broad plain of the Huguenot flats, checkered with field and forest and pasture, and traversed by well-kept roads, and dotted over with the buildings of prosperous farms and thriving villages, had given place, in the panorama of my journey, to rugged mountains, steep and densely wooded, except where, on some less hopeless site at the very margin of cultivation, a settler had cleared the land and begun a conflict with the stony soil in an almost desperate struggle for a living. Here were mountain-roads that went from bad to worse, until, before I had crossed the range, my way degenerated into a narrow, rocky trail, overgrown with weeds, and along which I walked for a stretch of six or eight miles without passing a dwelling.
That was in the afternoon. At a little before twelve o'clock I had come to Shohola Falls. There, in a "hollow" on the bank of a mountain-stream, stood a saw-mill, surrounded by piles of bleaching boards and a few rough, unpainted cottages. Through the open door of a shop I caught sight of an old carpenter bending over his bench. He entered very readily into directions about the way and told me that I had but to follow a direct road to Kimble, and from there there was no difficulty in the way to Tafton, which, he said, was as far as I could get that day. Then, with an eye on my pack, he asked pointedly what I was peddling. The forgotten magazines recurred to me and I opened my pack and handed him a copy. The frequent change of subject and the variety of illustration fixed for a time his excited attention.
Half a score of young children now crowded about the door, and edged cautiously into the shop, fixing upon me eyes wide open with the hunger of curiosity. They were all barefooted and ragged, and not one of them was clean, and at a single glance you saw that, mountain-bred and young as they were, there was no wholesome color in their faces, and that the very beauty of childhood was already fading before a persistent diet from the frying-pan.
The old carpenter presently turned upon me with the air of one who was master of the situation.
"Would you like to sell some of them books around here?" he asked.
I told him that I should.