50 NORTH CAROLINA 



answered my good-morning. Could she tell 

 me where Zeb McKinney lived ? I inquired. 

 Yes, it was the next house down the road, 

 " about a quarter." Hereabouts, as I knew, 

 a "quarter" means a quarter of a mile. 

 In Yankee land it means twenty-five cents. 

 The character of a people may be judged in 

 part by the ellipses of their daily speech, — 

 the things that are taken for granted by 

 every one as present in the minds of others. 

 I believe I did not raise the question of 

 ravens at this first house. For the instant 

 it was enough to know that I had arrived at 

 Turtlepond. But my eye was open and my 

 ear alert. And surely this was a place for 

 ravens and every wild thing : a narrow val- 

 ley, tightly shut in, with nothing in sight 

 but the crowding walls and a patch of sky. 

 Aloft in the distance, in the direction of 

 Hickory Gap (so I heard it called after- 

 ward, and wished that all place-names were 

 equally euphonious), some large bird, hawk 

 or eagle, was sailing out of sight. What a 

 groveling creature is man, in the compari- 

 son ! Along the brookside grew splendid 

 halesia-trees, full of white bells, and a more 

 splendid crab-apple tree, — one of the glo- 



