Farewell, fore'er, thy love-lit e'en, (Canteen!) Ah, maiden o' the log-locked cabin!- Just big enough to hide Queen Mab in!— Be thou, O be, forever mine. (O keg!) (R. L. Brutus.) Then the solemn cortége sadly moved on, and slowly wound its devious way down the valley, leading Brutus, and guiding his halting steps, as he continually turned to gaze backward towards his true-love this side the Unicoi. "Six miles yet," sighed Brutus, "and not a drop left." Our way now lay through a wild, broken country by the side of a clear winding stream. Sometimes we traveled the road, but oftener the broken tramway. At one point, where we were on the opposite side from the road, with a dense laurel screen shutting out the view, we prepared for a cool plunge into an icy stream. How were we to know that a neighborhood path ran just inside the fence? How were we to know or conceive that rustic swains and maidens were going to dese crate the holy Sabbath by coming along that path upon a Sunday berrying expedition? While sitting on the fence beneath the shade of a wide-spreading birch, waiting to cool off, in a covey of dreadful sunbonnets loomed up full view. "Hold on there, girls," I shouted, plunging into the pool head-foremost, like a muskrat. Two jolly urchins came up, holding their sides with laughter, and I told them to tell the party that we would seek modest hiding whilst they went by. carin'," said one of the boys. "We hain't a "I know you don't care, you little imp, but we do," I said, "and the girls do." Just then a young mountaineer came by, and we came to terms. The tittering procession went solemnly by, with sunbonnets all set indiscreetly sidewise, and they had scarcely got by when Brutus launched himself into the pool like a bull frog, exclaiming as he went: "D-'f I can stand those thorns any longer." As we walked lazily down the last mile, Panier thought it best to cross the creek to the road. Poising himself with his umbrella under his arm, upon the smooth top of a great "biscuit rock," he leaped for the top of another. His foot slipped, and he sat down in the water, with the huge white rock between his legs and the umbrella under his arm and back contemptuously upstream. "Why don't you hoist your umbrella,” cried Brutus, as we rolled convulsed upon the ground. Next morning our party of Wagonauts. came down for a plunge in the creek before a delicious breakfast at Roan Station hotel. While we were out enjoying the clear waters of Doe River, a waiter came to the proprietor with: "Boss, dem gemmen whar come in las' night done skip de house." 66 "Why, George," said the proprietor; they looked like gentlemen." "Cyarnt allus tell, boss; I knowed dey wuz sompin wrong ez soon as I ketched de eye o' dat'n wid de black mustacher an' looked at de cut o' dat little un wid de light hyar an' mustacher. I lay dey done overpuswaded dat big fat man dey called Mr. Ramp. He looked like a plum gemman." "They didn't take their baggage, did they, George?" "Dat dey didn't; dat bargage hain't got nuffin in't nohow 'cept three empty quart bottles; I seed em a strainin' dem larst night." A rail journey of two hours through the canyon of the Doe, as wild and as rugged as any on the Rocky Mountains, brought us to Johnson City and the end of the first wagonautic expedition. NOTE.—The suspicion that our party had skipped the house is literally true, except that Brutus was the excepted party and described as a "plum gemman." |