In travelling through a wild mountain region, where I was a total stranger, I came to a small village of about a dozen houses, with a little store and tavern. Before I reached it, I heard men hallooing in the most boisterous manner. When I drove up weary to the public-house, I was surrounded with such a set of savage-looking men as I never had seen before, and all intoxicated. Every man had on a hunting-shirt, with a belt round him, to which hung a long butcher-knife. I felt afraid of the men, I must confess, and would have been glad to have been elsewhere, especially as my buggy and trunk seemed to attract rather too much attention. After I had got food for myself and horse, and laid round some tracts as quietly as possible, I started, hoping to reach a point near twenty miles distant that night. Some part of the way I was told the road was very good, but mostly rough and mountainous. As soon as I was out of sight, I drove rapidly, and made the first five miles in an hour, when I began to breathe easier. But all at once I heard the most unearthly yelling behind me that had ever greeted my ears. My horse was frightened, and tried to run off. In a few moments I heard the clatter of horses’ feet, and concluded all was over with me. In a moment I was surrounded with some eight or ten of the most desperate looking men, and told to stop; that they wanted to know what I was loaded with. I told them I was loaded with good religious books, which I was distributing among people that had none. I was then ordered to give them all up to them, and they would scatter them on the other side of the mountain, for there were no books over there. I told them I knew they were too generous to take all that I had. I then told them to listen to me, and I would tell them what the books taught. So I began and preached them the most earnest sermon that I ever preached. One of them said, “Give me your hand, sir, for I never had a preacher by the hand in my life.” I held his hand firmly, and preached on, although the muzzle of his gun was frequently in very dangerous proximity to my person. It was evident they began to feel uneasy under my wayside sermon, and for fear they would leave me without tracts, I began the distribution, and gave each one a number of the most suitable I could find. They invited me to come over the mountains and preach, and I would get plenty to come and hear me. Some of those tracts were found more than a year after by one of our colporteurs, carefully preserved and highly prized. CHAPTER XIII.