olling Creek, through a pretty, broken country, crossed
the Caney River, and followed it up a few miles to Wilson's plantation.
There are little intervales along the river, where hay is cut and corn
grown, but the region is not much cleared, and the stock browse about in
the forest. Wilson is the agent of the New York owner of a tract of
some thirteen thousand acres of forest, including the greater portion of
Mount Mitchell, a wilderness well stocked with bears and deer, and
full of streams abounding in trout. It is also the playground of the
rattlesnake. With all these attractions Big Tom's life is made lively in
watching game poachers, and endeavoring to keep out the foraging cattle
of the few neighbors. It is not that the cattle do much injury in
the forest, but the looking after them is made a pretense for roaming
around, and the roamers are liable to have to defend themselves against
the deer, or their curiosity is excited about the bears, and lately they
have taken to exploding powder in the streams to kill the fish.

Big Tom's plantation has an openwork stable, an ill-put-together frame
house, with two rooms and a kitchen, and a veranda in front, a loft, and
a spring-house in the rear. Chickens and other animals have free run
of the premises. Some fish-rods hung in the porch, and hunter's gear
depended on hooks in the passage-way to the kitchen. In one room were
three beds, in the other two, only one in the kitchen. On the porch was
a loom, with a piece of cloth in process. The establishment had the
air of taking care of itself. Neither Big Tom nor his wife was at home.
Sunday seemed to be a visiting day, and the travelers had met many
parties on horseback. Mrs. Wilson was away for a visit of a day or two.
One of the sons, who was lounging on the veranda, was at last induced
to put up the horses; a very old woman, who mumbled and glared at the
visitors, was found in the kitchen, but no intelligible response could
be got out of her. Presently a bright little girl, the housekeeper in
charge, appeared. She said that her paw had gone up to her brother's
(her brother was just married and lived up the river in the house where
Mr. Murchison stayed when he was here) to see if he could ketch a bear
that had been rootin' round in the corn-field the night before. She
expected him back by sundown--by dark anyway. 'Les he'd gone after the
bear, and then you could n't tell when he would come.

It appeared that Big Tom was a th