charges of unfairness.

* * * * *

It turned very cold that night. The last thing I heard was Matt Hyde
protesting to the hunchback:

"Durn you, Bill Cope, you're so cussed crooked a man cain't lay cluss
enough to you to keep warm!"

Once when I awoke in the night the beech trees were cracking like
rifle-shots from the intense frost.

Next morning John announced that we were going to get another bear.

"Night afore last," he said, "Bill dremp that he seed a lot o' fat meat
layin' on the table; an' it done come true. Last night I dremp me one
that never was knowed to fail yet. Now you see!"

It did not look like it by evening. We all worked hard and endured
much--standers as well as drivers--but not a rifle had spoken up to the
time when, from my far-off stand, I yearned for a hot supper.

Away down in the rear I heard the snort of a locomotive, one of those
cog-wheel affairs that are specially built for mountain climbing. With a
steam-loader and three camps of a hundred men each, it was despoiling
the Tennessee forest. Slowly, but inexorably, a leviathan was crawling
into the wilderness and was soon to consume it.

[Illustration: "....Powerful steep and Laurely...."]

"All this," I apostrophized, "shall be swept away, tree and plant, beast
and fish. Fire will blacken the earth; flood will swallow and spew forth
the soil. The simple-hearted native men and women will scatter and
disappear. In their stead will come slaves speaking strange tongues, to
toil in the darkness under the rocks. Soot will arise, and foul gases;
the streams will run murky death. Let me not see it! No; I will

"'... Get me to some far-off land
Where higher mountains under heaven stand ...
Where other thunders roll amid the hills,
Some mightier wind a mightier forest fills
With other strains through other-shapen boughs.'"

Wearily I plodded back to camp. No one had arrived but "Doc." The old
man had been thumped rather severely in yesterday's scrimmage, but
complained only of "a touch o' rheumatiz." Just how this disease had
left his clothes in tatters he did not explain.

It was late when Matt and Granville came in. The crimson and yellow of
sunset had turned to a faultless turquoise, and this to a violet
afterglow; then suddenly night rose from the valleys and enveloped us.

About nine o'clock I went out on the Little Chestnut Bald and fired
signals, but there was no answer. The