roaring, foaming river.  From an overhanging rock a spring of ice-cold water, rivaling the Hypocrene in purity, bursts forth and plunges into the river.  The space had grown up with young maples, and the underbrush being cleaned out, formed an ideal camping place for hunters and berry pickers.  I was congratulating myself on not meeting a solitary individual when I reached “Rock House” and found it blocked with wagons and tents.  I cast one look at the foaming river and another at the bluff.  I had passed through some scenes of danger, but never before had I been half so frightened.  It was too late to retreat, the bluff could not be scaled and the river was out of the question.  Nerving myself, I determined to go ahead, come what might.  In front of one of the wagons stood a lady with whom I was well acquainted.  I asked her how I could get through.  She replied without recognizing me that I would have to go through camp.  As I passed around the wagon I came face to face with Judge Lemley’s wife.  Her home had been my home for years and next to my mother and sisters I reverenced her above all women of earth.  She looked at me.  I bowed and she nodded her head and I passed on.  No sooner had I passed out of sight than Mrs. McDaniels, the first lady I met, ran to Mrs. Lemley and said:  “Did you see that man?” “O,” replied Mrs. Lemley, “it was only some old lousy hunter.”  I had made my escape and no one had recognized me.  I was jubilant, happy.  But horror of horrors!  At a turn of the road I came full on a whole bevy, flock, troop or herd of young girls, and at their head was my “best girl.”  I here submit and affirm, that had I foreseen this, rivers, mountains, grizzly bears, Indians, all the dangers of the wild would have had no terrors for me at that moment.  My dogs closed round me and the girls at sight of that “old man of the woods,” that awful apparition, ceased their laughter.  With sobered faces they shied around me as I strode past, and when fairly safe broke into a run for camp.  I heard them running, and in imagination could see their scared faces.  But I was safe—­no one had recognized me and I was again happy.

Arriving at Mr. Allen’s, I related to him the story of my misfortunes.  He trimmed my hair, gave me a shave and after changing my “clothes,” I once more assumed the semblance, as Mrs. Allen expressed it, “of a Christian man.”

That evening I saddled a horse and rode back to the camp.  I began then to see the full humor of the whole affair, but it required an hour to convince them that I was really the strange apparition that passed through camp that morning.

Chapter VII.

Colonel Thompson’s First Newspaper Venture.