No one disputed his assertion, and so, relative to this subject, he spun a story of how one of his hounds, one night many years since, had crept so close to the camp fire that all of his hair on one side was burnt off, and Wid awoke to detect the peculiar scent and to feel the first flakes of a snow storm that fell three feet deep before daylight. As though this story needed something to brace it up, Wid continued: “Whatever I talk of as facts, you kin count on as true as Scriptur.” Israel Medford, nicknamed Wid, the master-hunter of the Balsam range, is a singular character, and a good representative of an old class of mountaineers, who, reared in the wilderness, still spend most of their time in hunting and fishing. He possesses a standard type of common sense; an abundance of native wit, unstrengthened by even the slightest “book-larnin’;” is a close observer, a perfect mimic, and a shrewd judge of character. His reputation as a talker is wide-spread; and, talking to the point, he commands the closest attention. His conversation abounds in similes; and, drawn as they are from his own observation, they are always striking. He is now sixty-five years old, and has been all his life a resident of Haywood county. That night as he sat cross-legged close to the fire, turning in the flames a stick with a slice of fat pork on it, with his broad-brimmed hat thrown on the ground, fully exposing his thick, straight, gray locks, and clear, ruddy, hatchet-shaped face, bare but for a red mustache, lighted up with youthful animation, he kept shaking the index finger of his right hand, while in his talk he jumped from one subject to another with as much alacrity as his bow legs might carry him over the mountains. “What I don’t know about these mountings,” said he, directing his keen blue eyes upon one member of the group, “haint of enny profit to man or devil. Why, I’ve fit bars from the Dark Ridge kentry to the headwaters of the French Broad. I’ve brogued it through every briar patch an’ laurel thicket, an’ haint I bin with Guyot, Sandoz, Grand Pierre, and Clingman over every peak from hyar to the South Caroliny an’ Georgy lines? Say?” “What do you mean by ‘brogued it’?” was asked. “Crawled, thets what hit means; just as you’d hev to do ef you perused every pint o’ the mountings; ef you went through Hell’s Half Acre; ef you slid down the Shinies, or clim the Chimbleys.” “Hit’s rough thar,” remarked a broad-shouldered, heavy-mustached young fellow, named Allen. “Rough?” resumed Wid, “wal, I reckon hit is.” “But a man can git in rough places right on this slope, can’t he?” some one inquired. “In course,” remarked another hunter, “Wid, you cum powerful nigh peeterin’ out nigh hyar, wunct, didn’t you?”