Begin the art of finding peace, Beloved:--it is art, no less. Sometimes we find it hid beneath The orchards in their springtime dress: Sometimes one finds it in oak woods, Sometimes in dazzling mountain-snows; In books, sometimes. But pray begin By finding it within a rose. LADY IRON-HEELS[3] I THE SEVEN SUSPICIONS ONE Saturday in May I was hurrying from mountainous North Carolina into mountainous Tennessee. Because of my speed and air of alarm, I was followed by the Seven Suspicions. I was either a revenue detective in pursuit of moonshiners, or a moonshiner pursued by revenue detectives, or a thief hurrying out of hot territory, or a deputy sheriff pursuing a thief, or a pretended non-combatant hurrying toward a Tennessee feud, actually an armed recruit, or I had just killed my family’s hereditary enemy and was eluding his avengers, or I had bought some moonshine whisky and was trying to get out of a bad region before nightfall. These suspicions implied that the inhabitants admired me. Yet I hurried. I came upon one article of my creed, the very next day, Sunday. But Saturday was a season of panic, preparation, and trial. The article of my creed that I won as my reward might be stated in this fashion: “_Peace is to be found, even in a red and bleeding rose._” I was accustomed to the feudist and the assassin. Such people had been good to me, and I had walked calmly through their haunts. But now the smothering landscape seemed to double every natural fear. The hills were so steep and so close together that only the indomitable corn and rye climbed to the top to see the sun. The road was in the bed of a scolding rivulet. People in general travelled horseback. Cross-logs for those afoot bridged high above the streams every half mile. There was a primeval something about the heavy chains of the cross-logs, binding them to the trees, that suggested the forgotten beginning of an iron people, some harsh iron-willed Sparta. This impression was strengthened by the unpainted dwellings, hunched close to the path, with thick walls to resist siege. What first fixed these outlaws here, as in a nest, with a ring of houseless open country round them? A traveller was more shut from the horizon than in the slums of Chicago. The road climbed no summits. It writhed like a snake. And there were snakes sunning themselves on every other cross-log. _And there was never a flower to be seen._ An old woman, kindly enough, gave this beggar a noon-meal for the asking, but the landscape had struck into me so I almost feared to eat the bread. For this fear I sternly blamed my perverse imagination. Refreshed in body only, I crept like a fascinated fly, dragged by occult force toward a spider’s den. I felt as though I had reached the very heart of the trap when I stepped into the streets of the profane village of Flagpond, Tennessee.