46 NORTH CAROLINA 



If I failed to arrive there, it should not 

 be for want of using my tongue. From the 

 time I left Highlands I had inquired my 

 way of every man I met. For one thing, I 

 relish natural country talk ; and if there 

 is to be conversation, it must somehow be 

 opened. I kept in mind, too, the skepticism 

 of my Highlands informant, and by unhappy 

 experience I had learned how easy it is, in 

 cases of this kind, to go astray through some 

 misunderstanding of question or answer. 



So I sauntered along, with frequent inter- 

 ruptions, of course (that was part of the 

 game), — here for a bird, there for a flower, 

 a tree, or a bit of landscape. I recall es- 

 pecially great numbers of the tiny yellow 

 lady's-slipper and beds of the white-flowered 

 clintonia — the latter a novelty to me — just 

 coming into bloom. Then, by and by, the 

 road began a long, sidelong ascent of a 

 mountain ; but at the last moment, when I 

 seemed to have left human habitations be- 

 hind me for good, I saw across the narrow 

 valley through the forest — the branches at 

 this height being still in the bud — two men 

 at work in a ploughed field. Here was one 

 more opportunity to assure myself against 



