At last we wander off to explore further. Behind the house, on the slope of a hill, we find a conservatory and grapery, with a broken flight of steps leading to them. Both are falling to decay, the glass broken, the flowers and vines dead. The grapery is large, and must have been beautiful, I think, as I stand within, picturing green leaves and purple clusters of fruit, with the sun beating warmly on the glass roof. The reality is very different from this picture—a melancholy vine with a few yellow leaves clinging to it, and a bird distressfully fluttering to and fro. The conservatory looks quite as sad. Round the door a few petunias have taken root and are flourishing. Sylvia stoops and pulls one. “For a souvenir,” she says. I want a souvenir also, but I prefer one from the house, so I turn my steps in that direction. Over the rear of the building a growth of English ivy spreads, climbing to the very roof. It is in bloom, and I have seldom seen any thing more beautiful than the deep green of the leaves and the delicate tint of the blossoms against the soft gray stone. I pull a long spray, and, thus laden, go back to the carriage where Eric is calling us. “I am glad that we came here,” says Sylvia, as we drive away. “The other places which we have seen are only ordinary country-seats—charming enough in their way, but thoroughly commonplace. _This_ is a deserted castle in an enchanted wood.” CHAPTER XVIII. “Oh, set us down together in some place Where not a voice can break our heaven of bliss, Where naught but rocks and I can see her face Softening beneath the marvel of thy grace, Where not a foot our vanished steps can track— The golden age, the golden age come back!” “To-day,” says Eric, when we start from Flat Rock the next morning, “we shall cross the Blue Ridge, and go down to the lower world again.” “How do we cross?” asks Aunt Markham. “By Hickory-Nut Gap?” “Partly,” he answers. “We go through the Reedy Patch Gap, and come into Hickory-Nut about a third of the way down—high enough for the grandest scenery, however.” “If you wish to appreciate the elevation of the country,” says Charley, “observe that in approaching the Blue Ridge we shall not rise at all—but simply travel on a level until we begin to descend the mountains.” We accordingly observe this—which, indeed, could hardly fail to be observed by anyone who either enters or leaves the transmontane region. As we bowl along the excellent roads of Henderson, with the blue chain of mountains directly in our front, we are hardly able to realize that when evening comes they will be no longer in front, but behind us.