My inspection of the peak occupied scarcely a minute. Then I sat down in its exact center, lit my briar-root, hugged my knees, and allowed myself for the first time that day to think of yesterday's experience. You could never guess my first thought. It was that material would quickly accumulate now for my book. I sensed the approach of things--of many things, and not all of them were pleasant. In fact, some wore grisly aspects. I believe in premonitions. I don't know what they are, or what causes them, or anything about them except they exist. But one came to me as I sat on the tiptop of old Baldy this afternoon, smoking my pipe and hugging my knees, and feeling very much like a bird in its eyrie. I was troubled and elated in turn; a queer experience, but common to all. There was no reason in the world why I should have been either depressed or uplifted. But somehow the near future looked to me to be vibrant with incidents waiting their chance to happen, and in some unformed way I felt that, innocently enough, I had set in motion a train of events which would quickly envelope me in their workings. I say it was a premonition--a prescience--and I believe I am right. I can make nothing yet of Lessie or her household. Granf'er and Granny have their prototypes among those who call themselves ultra refined. Each is interesting to me, in his and her way. Granny has a suspicious nature. I cannot think she is as down-right mean and crusty as she pretends to be. Maybe Granf'er is trifling, and trying, and Granny might have to lash him with her tongue to keep him in the traces. I am sure the old lady's dislike for me is real, though why this should be I cannot fathom just now. I have a strong suspicion that deep down in her heart Granny has a feeling of worship for the Dryad, and in everything which presents itself in masculine shape she sees a possible cause for Lessie leaving her. That seems the most plausible reason for her dislike. Lessie has plunged me into a quandary where I can see no light at all. Her personality is the most complex I have ever encountered. She is absolutely baffling. I can't understand the way she talked to me as we came down the path from the house scarcely twenty-four hours ago. What was it within her that suggested the things of which she spoke? If she had delivered an oration in Latin I could not have been more surprised. She--the product of many generations of hill dwellers, whose intelligence always remained at a minimum, among whom the stirrings of ambition were never felt and where knowledge had never gained the slightest foothold--she to suffer the travail of a fettered mind striving for light; of a shackled soul struggling for expression! What could it mean? And to make the enshrouding darkness yet more dense, _she was cousin to the Satyr_! The Satyr! That whimsical, hapless ne'er-do-well who strolled the woods day after day, drinking white whiskey, and bringing strains from his old fiddle which made one's flesh