-out and gaunt. I met
him outside. He smiled as though I looked good to him, and asked with
some eagerness, "Can I buy something to eat here?"

"No," I answered, "you can't buy anything here"--how his face
fell!--"but I'll give you the best we have, and you're welcome."

Then you should have seen that smile!

He seemed to have just enough strength left to drag himself into the
hut. I asked no questions, though wondering what a cripple, evidently a
gentleman, though in rather bad repair, was doing on top of the Smoky
Mountains. It was plain that he had spent more than one night
shelterless in the cold rain, and that he was quite famished. While I
was baking the biscuit and cooking some meat, he told his story. This is
the short of it:

"I am a Canadian, McGill University man, electrician. My company sent me
to Cincinnati. I got a vacation of a couple of weeks, and thought I'd
take a pedestrian tour. I can walk better than you'd think," and he
tapped the short leg.

I liked his grit.

"I knew no place to go," he continued; "so I took a map and looked for
what might be interesting country, not too far from Cincinnati. I picked
out these mountains, got a couple of government topographical sheets,
and, thinking they would serve like European ordnance maps, I had no
fear of going astray. It was my plan to walk through to the Balsam
Mountains, and so on to the Big Pigeon River. I went to Maryville,
Tennessee, and there I was told that I would find a cabin every five or
six miles along the summit from Thunderhead to the Balsams."

I broke in abruptly: "Whoever told you that was either an impostor or an
ignoramus. There are only four of these shacks on the whole Smoky range.
Two of them, the Russell cabin and the Spencer place, you have already
passed without knowing it. This is called the Hall cabin. None of these
three are occupied save for a week or so in the fall when the cattle are
being rounded up, or by chance, as my partner and I happen to be here
now. Beyond this there is just one shack, at Siler's Meadow. It is down
below the summit, hidden in timber, and you would never have seen it.
Even if you had, you would have found it as bare as a last year's mouse
nest, for nobody ever goes there except a few bear-hunters. From there
onward for forty miles is an uninhabited wilderness so rough that you
could not make seven miles a day in it to save your life, even if you
knew the course; and there is no trail at all. Th