108 NORTH CAROLINA 



jaunt down the Walhalla road, when I met 

 a man driving a pair of dwarfish steers 

 hitched to a pair of wheels, on the axle-tree 

 of which was fastened a rude, widely ven- 

 tilated, home-made box, with an odd-shaped, 

 home-made basket hung on one side of it, 

 the driver, literally, on the box. I greeted 

 him, and he pulled up. " Well, I see you 

 are still here," he said, after a good-morning. 

 " You have seen me before ? " I replied. 

 He was sallow and thin, the usual moun- 

 taineer's condition, but wore the pleasant- 

 est of smiles. " Yes ; I saw you down in 

 the Cove with the sick man." He was the 

 pilgrim who took the "narrow way," and 

 was hunting for a cow, though I should not 

 have remembered him. And now, peeping 

 through one of the holes in the box, I saw 

 that he had a calf inside. "A Jersey?" 

 said I. " Part Jersey," he answered. Mr. 



S (one of the villagers, whom by this 



time I counted as a friend, a white-haired, 

 youngish veteran of the civil war, on the 

 Union side, a neighbor I had " taken to " 



from the moment I saw him), Mr. S 



had given the calf to the man's father-in-law, 

 and he, the son-in-law, had driven up to the 



