Is he blind, our friend the Cracker? Already, in the very outset of our journey, we have beheld such varied beauties as have steeped our souls in joy. After weeks of rainless weather the morning had been showery, and on our setting forth at noon we had found the world new washed and decked for our coming. Birds were singing, rainbows glancing, in quivering, water-laden trees; flowers were shimmering in the sunshine; the young growth was springing up glorious from the blackness of desolating winter fires. Such tender tones of pink and gray! such fiery-hearted reds and browns and olive-greens! such misty vagueness in the shadows! such brilliance in the sunlight that melted through the openings of the woods! "All alike," indeed! No "accidents" of rock or hill are here, but oh the grandeur of those far-sweeping curves of undulating surface! the mystery of those endless aisles of solemn-whispering pines! the glory of color, intense and fiery, which breathes into every object a throbbing, living soul! For hours we journeyed through the forest, always in the centre of a vast circle of scattered pines, upon the outer edge of which the trees grew dense and dark, stretching away into infinity. Our road wandered in and out among the prostrate victims of many a summer tempest: now we were winding around dark "bays" of sweet-gum and magnolia; now skirting circular ponds of delicate young cypress; now crossing narrow "branches" sunk deep in impenetrable "hummocks" of close-crowded oak and ash and maple, thick-matted with vines and undergrowth; now pausing to gather orchis and pitcher-plants and sun-kisses and andromeda; now fording the broad bend of Peter's Creek where it flows, sapphire in the sunshine, out from the moss-draped live-oaks between high banks of red and yellow clays and soft gray sand, to lose itself in a tangle of flowering shrubs; now losing and finding our way among the intricate cross-roads that lead by Bradley's Creek and Darbin Savage's tramway and the "new-blazed road" of the county clerk's itinerary. Suddenly the sky grew dark: thunder began to roll, and--were we in the right road? It seemed suspiciously well travelled, for now we called to mind that Middleburg was nigh at hand, and thither we had been warned _not_ to go. There was a house in the distance, the second we had seen since leaving the "settle_ments_" near the river. And there we learned that we were right and wrong: it _was_ the Middleburg road. After receiving sundry lucid directions respecting a "blind road" and an "old field," we turned away. How dark it was growing! how weirdly soughed the wind among the pine tops! how bodingly the thunder growled afar! There came a great slow drop: another, and suddenly, with swiftly-rushing sound, the rain was upon us, drenching us all at once before waterproofs and umbrellas could be made available. [Illustration: "NOT ALL THE BLANDISHMENTS OF THE SMALL BOY AVAILED."]