"Fair was she to behold, that maiden of seventeen summers, Black were her eyes as the berry that grows on the thorn by the way-side: Black, yet how softly they gleamed beneath the brown shade of her tresses." Who can help repeating the familiar words of the idyl amid such scenery, and in such a presence? "We are now approaching a Negro settlement," said my _compagnon de voyage_ after we had passed the Acadians; "and we will take a fresh horse at Deer's Castle; this is rough travelling." In a few minutes we saw a log house perched on a bare bone of granite that stood out on a ragged hill-side, and presently another cabin of the same kind came in view. Then other scare-crow edifices wheeled in sight as we drove along; all forlorn, all patched with mud, all perched on barren knolls, or gigantic bars of granite, high up, like ragged redoubts of poverty, armed at every window with a formidable artillery of old hats, rolls of rags, quilts, carpets, and indescribable bundles, or barricaded with boards to keep out the air and sunshine. "You do not mean to say those wretched hovels are occupied by living beings?" said I to my companion. "Oh yes," he replied, with a quiet smile, "these are your people, your _fugitives_." "But, surely," said I, "they do not live in those airy nests during your intensely cold winters?" "Yes," replied my companion, "and they have a pretty hard time of it. Between you and I," he continued, "they are a miserable set of devils; they won't work, and they shiver it out here as well as they can. During the most of the year they are in a state of abject want, and then they are very humble. But in the strawberry season they make a little money, and while it lasts are fat and saucy enough. We can't do anything with them, they won't work. There they are in their cabins, just as you see them, a poor, woe-begone set of vagabonds; a burden upon the community; of no use to themselves, nor to anybody else." "Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope, who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow, attend to the history of Rasselas, here in his happy valley." "Now then," said my companion, as this trite quotation was passing through my mind. The wagon had stopped in front of a little, weather-beaten house that kept watch and ward over an acre of greensward, broken ever and anon with a projecting bone of granite, and not only fenced with stone, but dotted also with various mounds of pebbles, some as large as a paving-stone, and some much larger. This was "Deer's Castle." In front of the castle was a swing-sign with an inscription: