had suggested the possibility that he could do it.

But at the moment the easiest thing to do seemed to be to ride down to Wilson’s.  When there we could turn across country to the Big Ivy, although, said the landlord, you can ride over Mitchell just as easy as anywhere—­a lady rode plump over the peak of it last week, and never got off her horse.  You are not obliged to go; at Big Tom’s, you can go any way you please.

Besides, Big Tom himself weighed in the scale more than Mount Mitchell, and not to see him was to miss one of the most characteristic productions of the country, the typical backwoodsman, hunter, guide.  So we rode down Bolling 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.