These windows look down on the Main Street, but there is room and to spare in Asheville, so we are not hedged in by buildings. Immediately in front is an open space through which we look at the green hills on which the town is built, rising with gentle, undulating swell in every direction, while afar lie the blue mountains, height overtopping height, peak rising behind peak, graceful lines blending, through the gaps more remote ranges to be seen lying so pale and faint on the horizon that it is almost impossible to tell where mountains end and sky begins. It is only a glimpse of the beauty which is in store for us, yet we are delighted. There is a brilliancy about the scene which is almost startling. We were not prepared for such clear, exquisite colors—colors that would thrill an artist’s inmost soul—such emerald greenness, such heavenly blueness, such diamond-like brightness of atmosphere. “It is a country of which to dream!” cries Sylvia, clasping her hands. “Why have we never come here before? Why have we gone everywhere else, and neglected this Arcadia lying at our very door?” “In order that we might be fitted to appreciate it when we did come,” I reply. “We are now able to compare it—unbiased by any spell of earthly association—with much more famous regions, and to declare that it surpasses them all.” “Surpasses them!—I should think so, indeed! Have you ever seen anywhere else such tints as those on the mountains yonder? Come! I see a piazza—let us go out on it. One cannot have too much of this air. It is like an elixir of life.” We go out on the piazza. The air is indeed like an elixir in its buoyancy and lightness. Birds are singing in the leafy depths of the trees that droop before the hotel, people are passing up and down the street—among them we presently recognize Eric, walking with a more elastic step than is customary with him in the low-country. MacGregor’s foot is plainly on his native heath. He stops to shake hands with every other person whom he meets, and there is much cordiality in these greetings. Sylvia watches him with amused eyes. When he passes under the piazza she leans over and speaks: “What is the Arcadian form of salutation, Eric? Shall one say ‘God save you!’ or ‘The top of the morning?’ Isn’t it delicious—the country, I mean? Alice and I are here. Come up.” “You had better come down,” he says. “The breakfast-bell is ringing. I will meet you in the parlor in five minutes.” In five minutes we meet in that apartment. Aunt Markham has declined to rise for breakfast, and reports that she is aching in every limb from the trying passage of Swannanoa Gap. “I don’t know when I shall recover,” she says, solemnly. Charley is always incorrigibly lazy, therefore it follows that we go in to breakfast attended by Eric alone.