inated pumpkin, my good man," said the
Professor, pointing to the Doctor, "and I am Colonel Bangem's spiritual
adviser. We got here a day sooner than we expected to."

"You don't say? May I never! An' the colonel never telled me nothin'
nohow 'bout any one uv you bein' crazy. Howdee? How do you like these
parts? Right smart town we've got yere, hain't it? I'll take keer uv
you. There hain't no man on Elk River kin take keer uv you better nor
Tim Price, ary time. I hain't much up to moon men, though. Thar's one
feller up my way thet gits kinder skeery at the full uv the moon; but I
hain't never tended him. I reckon I kin l'arn the job,--ez the ole boy
said when his marm set him to mindin' fleas off the cat."

Tim Price was the hunter, boatman, fisherman, yarn-spinner, and
character of his region, and Colonel Bangem's faithful ally in all his
sports: the latter had therefore sent him to meet his friends on their
arrival at Charleston, and he at once proceeded to take command of the
whole party as a matter of course.

"I footed it over the mountains, and sent my boat the river way. Hit
oughter be yere now: so we'll pack you men's tricks to the boats an'
p'int 'em up-stream. It 'ill be sundown afore we git thar."

The party started from the hotel, the procession followed to see them
off, and they were soon down the Kanawha and into the mouth of Elk at
the point of the town. Log rafts, huge barges, miles of railroad-ties,
laid-up steamers, peddling-boats, with their highly-colored storehouses,
fishermen's scows, floating homely cabins alive with bare-legged
children and idlers of the water-side, push-boats loaded to the edge of
the narrow gunwales with merchandise for delivery to stores and dwellers
far up the river, boats loaded with hoop-poles, grist, chickens, and the
"home-plunder" of some mover to civilization, coming down the river from
the mountain-clearing, and samples of every conceivable kind of the
river's outpour, were tied to the banks or lazily floating on the
currentless back-water from the Kanawha.

An old steamboat-captain once said of Elk that "it was the all-firedest
river God ever made,--fer it rises at both ends and runs both ways to
wunst." This is true, and is caused by the Kanawha, when rising, pouring
its water into the mouth of Elk and reversing its current for many
miles, while at the same time rain falls in the mountains, increasing
the latter river's depth and velocity. Flour-mills, iron-foun