A VANISHING ROMANCE 209 
as little consciousness of disgrace as she might tell 
you that he had gone to visit his relatives. To go to 
jail for moonshining was almost as good as being a 
martyr. When a man came out, his friends laughed 
and shook hands with him, and he went back to 
"stilling" with a grim determination not to get 
caught again. What happened to the stills on Tryon 
Mountain is fast happening everywhere; as roads 
and settlements come in, the "moonshine still" goes 
out. 
Although the moonshiner existed everywhere in 
the mountains, his most noted retreat was in the 
Dark Corners, on the eastern slope of the Blue 
Ridge. Where is this mysterious and dangerous 
region? Nobody seems to know exactly, though in a 
general way it is over towards Hogback, across the 
South Carolina state line. In course of time one dis- 
covers the name to be generic. There are " Dark 
Corners" on the maps in various states of the South, 
but they are not related to each other, nor to us 
excepting through a common reputation for lawless- 
ness. If nature had planned our Dark Corners on 
purpose for the successful distillation of iniquitous 
"corn-juice," she could not have planned better, 
made up as it is of valleys guarded by mountain 
walls, furnished with rushing streams, and with 
numerous obscure exits in different directions. Best 
of all, perhaps, it lies directly on the State line, for 
when the skein of the moonshiner's life becomes 
tangled by spies and revenuers, he needs another 
state handy to step into for rest and reflection, and 
