Five minutes more, and a second pedestrian hove in sight. He, likewise, was in haste. “You are all in a hurry to-day,” I said to him. I was in pursuit of acquaintance, and in such places it is the part of wisdom, and of good manners as well, to make the most of chance opportunities. “Yes, sir,” he made answer, slackening his pace; “I want to get my road done. I’ve got till Saturday, and I want to get it done;” and he put on steam again, and was gone. His countenance was familiar, but I could not tell where I had seen him,--one of the fathers of the Webb settlement, perhaps. The mountaineers, all thin, all light-complexioned, and all wearing the same drab homespun, look confusingly alike to a newcomer. Whoever the stranger was, he had evidently undertaken to build some part of the new road, and was returning from the village with supplies. In one hand he carried two heavy drills, and under the other arm a strip of pork, a piece of brown paper wrapped about the middle of it, and the long ends dangling. It did my vacationer’s heart good to see men so cheerfully industrious; but I thought it a reproach to the order of the world that so much hard work should yield so little of comfort. But then, who knows which was the more comfortable,--the idle, criticising tourist or the sweating laborer? For the time being, at all events, the laborer had the air of a person inwardly well off. A mountain man with a “contract” was not likely to be envious even of a boarder at “Mrs. Davis’s,” as the hotel is locally, and very properly, called. As I went on, passing the height of land and beginning my descent homeward, I met two other foot-passengers,--two women: one old and fat,--the only fat mountaineer of either sex seen in North Carolina,--with a red face and a staff; the other young, slightly built and pale, carrying an old-fashioned shotgun (the ramrod projecting) over her right shoulder. Both wore sunbonnets, and the younger had a braid of hair hanging down her back. With her slender figure, her colorless face, her serious look, and the long musket, she would have made a subject for a painter. This pair I could think of no excuse for accosting, much as I should have enjoyed hearing them talk.[7] Shortly after they had gone, I stopped to speak with a small boy who was climbing the hill, with a mewing kitten hugged tightly to his breast. He was taking it home to his cat, he said. She brought in mice and things, and wanted something to give them to. The little fellow was still young enough to understand the mother instinct. That was a truly social walk. I had never before found one of the mountain roads half so populous. Once, indeed, I drove all day without seeing a passenger of any sort, until, near the end of the afternoon and within a mile or two of the town, I met a solitary horseman.