Let us tell a secret, even before we enter. If, with the proper magic in our minds, we were guests here, a year or a day, we might write the world’s one unwritten epic. All day, in one of these tiny rooms, amid appointments that fill the spirit with the elation of simple things, we would write. At evening we would dream the next event by the fire. The epic would begin with the opening of the door. There appeared a military figure, with a face like Henry Irving’s in contour, like Whistler’s in sharpness, fantasy, and pride. “May I have a night’s lodging? I have no money.” “Come in.... We never turn a man away.” We were inside. He asked: “What might be your name?” I gave it. He gave his. The circle by the fire did not turn their heads, but presumably I was introduced. One child ran into the kitchen. My host gave me her chair. All looked silently into the great soap-kettle in the midst of the snapping logs. I have a high opinion of the fine people of the South, and gratefully remember the scattering of gentlefolk so good as to entertain me in their mansions. But in this cottage, with one glance at those fixed, flushed faces, I said: “This is the best blood I have met in this United States.” The five children were night-blooming flowers. There were hints of Doré in the shadow of the father, cast against the log walls of the cabin. He sat on the little stairway. He was a better Don Quixote than Doré ever drew. I said, “Every middle-aged man I have met in Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina has been a soldier, and I suppose you were.” He looked at me long, as though the obligation of hospitality did not involve conversation. He spoke at last: “I fought, but I could not help it. It was for home, or against home. I fought for this cabin.” “It is a beautiful cabin.” He relented a bit. “We have kept it just so, ever since my great-grandfather came here with his pack-mule and made his own trail. I--I hated the war. We did not care anything about the cotton and niggers of the fire-eaters. The niggers never climbed this high.” I changed the subject. “This is the largest fireplace I have seen in the South. A man could stand up in it.” He stiffened again. “_This is not the South. This is the Blue Ridge._” An inner door opened. It was plain the woman who stood there was his wife. She had the austere mouth a wife’s passion gives. She had the sweet white throat of her youth, that made even the candle-flame rejoice. She looked straight at me, with ink-black eyes. She was dumb, like some one struggling to awake. “Everything is ready,” she said at length to her husband. He turned to me: “Your supper is now in the kitchen, ‘if what we have is good enough.’” It was the usual formula for hospitality. I turned to the wife. “My dear woman, I did not know that this was going on. It is not right for you to set a new supper at this hour. I had enough on the road.”