Before it takes that desperate plunge into the unexplored caverns of the mountain, Lost Creek lends its aid to divers jobs of very prosaic work. Further up the valley it turns a mill-wheel, and on Mondays it is wont to assist in the family wash. A fire of pine-knots, kindled beside it on a flat rock, would twine long, lucent white flames about the huge kettle in which the clothes were boiled. Through the steam the distant landscape flickered, ethereal, dream-like. The garments, laid across a bench and beaten white with a wooden paddle, would flutter hilariously in the wind. Deep in some willowy tangle the water-thrush might sing. Ever and anon from the heights above vibrated the clinking of a hand-hammer and the clanking of a sledge. This iterative sound used to pulse like a lyric in Cynthia's heart. But her mother, one day, took up her testimony against it. "I do declar', it sets me plumb catawampus ter hev ter listen ter them blacksmiths, up yander ter thar shop, at thar everlastin' chink-chank an' chink-chank, considerin' the tales I hearn 'bout 'em, when I war down ter the quiltin' at M'ria's house in the Cove." She paused to prod the boiling clothes with a long stick. She was a tall woman, fifty years of age, perhaps, but seeming much older. So gaunt she was, so toothless, haggard, and disheveled, that but for her lazy step and languid interest she might have suggested one of Macbeth's witches, as she hovered about the great cauldron. "They 'lowed down yander ter M'ria's house ez this hyar Evander Price hev kem ter be the headin'est, no 'count critter in the kentry! They 'lowed ez he hev been a-foolin' round Pete Blenkins's forge, a-workin' fur him ez a striker, till he thinks hisself ez good a blacksmith ez Pete, an' better. An' all of a suddenty this same 'Vander Price riz up an' made a consarn ter bake bread in, sech ez hed never been seen in the mountings afore. They 'lowed down ter M'ria's ez they dunno what he patterned arter. The Evil One must hev revealed the contrivance ter him. But they say it did cook bread in less 'n haffen the time that the reg'lar oven takes; leastwise his granny's bread, 'kase his mother air a toler'ble sensible woman, an' would tech no sech foolish fixin'. But his granny 'lowed ez she didn't hev long ter live, nohow, an' mought ez well please the chil'ren whilst she war spared. So she resked a batch o' her salt-risin' bread on the consarn, an' she do say it riz like all possessed, an' eat toler'ble short. An' that banged critter 'Vander war so proud o' his contrivance that he showed it ter everybody ez kem by the shop. An' when two valley men rid by, an' one o' thar beastis cast a shoe, 'Vander hed ter take out his contraption fur them ter gape over, too. An' they ups an' says they hed seen the like afore a-many a time; sech ovens war common in the valley towns. An' when they fund out ez 'Vander hed never hearn on sech, but jes' got the idee out 'n his own foolishness, they jes' stared at one another.