But now there was another mountain to climb. It was low, long, and dull-looking, and so heavily wooded that there was little outlook. Azalea said she believed that it was the only mountain she ever had seen which she did not care for. The road was so bad that it was impossible for a wagon to pass over it; and even the horses had trouble making their way. Only Paralee, grown up in that tangle, knew how to thread it with ease. It was one of the few things which she did know well, and as she went on, showing no sign of weariness, her awkwardness and shyness began to drop from her. She was on her own ground—the ground where she and her people had fought their lonely fight for life; and she was carrying help to those whose sorrows had been a savage grief to her. Presently they reached a ragged clearing, stumbled past it to an ill-kept garden, passed a number of pig pens and a large chicken yard, and came upon the place that Paralee Panther called home. It had been rather a pleasant cabin, once, perhaps, in the old days when Thomas Panther had brought his bride there and had “aimed” to be a farmer and woodsman. But the roof now hardly gave shelter from the storms, the shutters sagged from the unglassed windows, the steps had rotted away, and one mounted to the floor by means of ill-chosen stones which had been placed before the door, and which rocked when they were stepped upon. Paralee plunged ahead to carry word to that desolated house that visitors were at hand. Visitors! The word means little enough to most people, thought Azalea, but to these strange, stricken people, these people who, as Paralee said, had “almost forgot how to talk,” it must be as the sight of a sail to one upon a desert island. Perhaps they would fear as much as they would welcome it; yet there was Paralee, dragging a gaunt woman to the door. “Tell ’em to ’light, ma, and come in,” begged the girl, using the mountaineers’ old phrase of hospitality. [Picture: There was Paralee, dragging a gaunt woman to the door. “Tell ’em to ’light, ma, and come in,” she begged] “We will, ma’am,” cried Haystack Thompson, just as if Mrs. Panther herself has spoken. “We’ll be glad to.” He left Keefe to help the ladies from their mounts, and himself went forward to shake this ghostlike woman by the hand. She was tall and sunburned, thin past belief, and so smitten by the silence and deadness of the days that she looked like a person who had lost some of her faculties. Yet now, with a visible effort, she summoned back her knowledge of what should be done when guests came.