Many buggies passed him, driving slowly, for the night was gracious with the sweet fragrance of the young summer, and the occupants of the vehicles were young, too, and no part of a summer dance is better than the going thither and the coming home. From this caravan came the music of much laughter, and now and then the lilting of a song: sounds as unaccustomed to Newt Spooner as grand opera. But the only impression made on him was the realization that he was too early; so, when he found a thick grove flanking the road, he climbed the fence and lay down under a hedge and rested. While he was stretched there in the dewy grass, he cocked and uncocked the revolver to make sure that, when he needed it, it would not fail him. It was a night for lovers and lovers were availing themselves of it, but to Newt Spooner the seductive whispers through the upper branches of the oaks carried no message of peace or minstrelsy. Yet, even to him, there was a dumb sense that life here in the great "down below" was a different thing, and, as he lay there fingering the mechanism of his revolver, he could not escape a large and disturbing wonderment. The breadth of the sky made him feel small and alone in the center of vastness. At home, mountain walls rose confiningly on all sides and one looked up at a narrowed patch of stars as if from the depth of a great well. But here one could gaze away on the level of the eyes and watch the wonderful phenomenon of a heaven coming down with its stars to meet the edge of the flattened earth. At home, one would ride the dirt roads on muleback and in silence, save where the hoofs splashed along the creek-beds. But here the horses beat a sharp rat-tat with metal shoes on a metaled road, and the rubber-tired wheels ran noiselessly. These people, too, reversed the order of things even as their country reversed them. At home, almost every one was poor; here every one seemed rich, and the women, whom every mountaineer knows should be treated as inferiors, suited only to the tasks of housework and child-rearing, were treated by the men as equals. That he knew from the chatter and laughter of those who passed in earshot, driving two and two. And what fools they all were, for surely no people who were not fools could chatter and laugh and sing! After an hour, the buggies passed less frequently, leaving the road free of travel, except for town-faring negroes on foot and singing. Then Newt Spooner came out from behind his hedge and made his way once more along the turnpike. What his eyes had once seen his memory retained with photographic distinctness, and as soon as he reached the beginning of the low stone fence, which he had noted that afternoon, he knew that he was drawing near the dance.