rim of blue iris so
thin as to be quite unnoticeable without close inspection. The eye
consequently was jet black and its expression utterly changed. My host
said it did not affect his vision materially, save that "things glimmer
a bit." I met him again the next day and he still was an odd-looking
creature indeed, with one eye a light blue and the other an absolute
black. The thing puzzled me until I recalled that the Latin name of
jimson weed is _Datura stramonium_; then, in a flash, it came to me that
stramonium is a powerful mydriatic.

If our man killer, hitherto mentioned, had had blue or gray eyes and had
not chosen to stand trial, then, with a cake of soap and a new suit and
a jimson leaf he might have made himself over so that his own mother
would not have known him. These simple facts are offered gratis to
writers of detective tales, whose stock of disguises nowadays is so
threadbare and (pardon me) so absurd.

The mountain home of to-day is the log cabin of the American
pioneer--not such a lodge as well-to-do people affect in Adirondack
"camps" (which cost more than framed structures of similar size), but a
pen that can be erected by four "corner men" in one day and is finished
by the owner at his leisure. The commonest type is a single large room,
with maybe a narrow porch in front and a plank door, a big stone
chimney at one end, a single sash for a window at the other, and a seven
or eight-foot lean-to at the rear for kitchen.

[Illustration: An Average Mountain Cabin]

Some of the early settlers, who had first choice of land, took pains in
building their houses, squaring the logs like bridge timbers, joining
them closely, smoothing their puncheons with an adze almost as truly as
if they were planed, and using mortar instead of clay in laying chimney
and hearth. But such houses nowadays are rare. If a man can afford so
much effort as all that he will build a framed dwelling. If not, he will
content himself with such a cabin as I have described. If he prospers he
may add a duplicate of it alongside and cover the whole with one roof,
leaving a ten or twelve-foot entry between.

In Carolina they seldom build a house of round logs, but rather hew the
inner and outer faces flat, out of a curious notion that this adds an
appearance of finish to the structure. If only they would turn the logs
over, so that the flat faces joined, leaving at least the outside in the
natural round, the house would need hardl