In the course of the morning a couple of stout fellows arrived, leading between them a young man whom they had arrested,—­it didn’t appear on any warrant, but they wanted to get him committed and locked up.  The offense charged was carrying a pistol; the boy had not used it against anybody, but he had flourished it about and threatened, and the neighbors wouldn’t stand that; they were bound to enforce the law against carrying concealed weapons.

The captors were perfectly good-natured and on friendly enough terms with the young man, who offered no resistance, and seemed not unwilling to go to jail.  But a practical difficulty arose.  The jail was locked up, the sheriff had gone away into the country with the key, and no one could get in.  It did not appear that there was any provision for boarding the man in jail; no one in fact kept it.  The sheriff was sent for, but was not to be found, and the prisoner and his captors loafed about the square all day, sitting on the fence, rolling on the grass, all of them sustained by a simple trust that the jail would be open some time.

Late in the afternoon we left them there, trying to get into the jail.  But we took a personal leaf out of this experience.  Our Virginia friends, solicitous for our safety in this wild country, had urged us not to venture into it without arms—­take at least, they insisted, a revolver each.  And now we had to congratulate ourselves that we had not done so.  If we had, we should doubtless on that Sunday have been waiting, with the other law-breaker, for admission into the Yancey County jail.

III

From Burnsville the next point in our route was Asheville, the most considerable city in western North Carolina, a resort of fashion, and the capital of Buncombe County.  It is distant some forty to forty-five miles, too long a journey for one day over such roads.  The easier and common route is by the Ford of Big Ivy, eighteen miles, the first stopping-place; and that was a long ride for the late afternoon when we were in condition to move.

The landlord suggested that we take another route, stay that night on Caney River with Big Tom Wilson, only eight miles from Burnsville, cross Mount Mitchell, and go down the valley of the Swannanoa to Asheville.  He represented this route as shorter and infinitely more picturesque.  There was nothing worth seeing on the Big Ivy way.  With scarcely a moment’s reflection and while the horses were saddling, we decided to ride to Big Tom Wilson’s.  I could not at the time understand, and I cannot now, why the Professor consented.  I should hardly dare yet confess to my fixed purpose to ascend Mount Mitchell.  It was equally fixed in the Professor’s mind not to do it.  We had not discussed it much.  But it is safe to say that if he had one well-defined purpose on this trip, it was not to climb Mitchell.  “Not,” as he put it,—­

  “Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
   Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,”