We have been discussing where we shall spend the months of August and September, and we have finally decided to turn our faces westward, and, crossing the Blue Ridge, explore as far as possible the comparatively unknown country which lies beyond—a country so elevated that its valleys lie more than two thousand feet above sea-level. The person by whose recommendation we decide on this programme is my cousin Eric Markham—a great hunter, a great lover of Nature, though outwardly the most unenthusiastic of human beings, a person whom his mother has never been able to drag to fashionable watering-places in her train, but who has spent summer after summer among the fair, wild, Carolina mountains, until his attachment to them is a family proverb. “The reason why I don’t advise you to go,” he says, when our comments have ceased, “is because I have no doubt you will be bored and disgusted. You will find no fashionable hotels, no bands of music; and then you will blame me! So I accept no responsibility, but simply repeat what I have said before, that if you want fresh air and glorious scenery—the grandest this side of the Yosemite—you must go to Western North Carolina to find them.” “We want just those things,” says Sylvia—Sylvia is my sister, and we are Aunt Markham’s orphan nieces—“I am tired of dancing and flirting and toilets! What a comfort it will be to put on a linen traveling-dress and a pair of thick-soled shoes, such as Nora wore in ‘Quits,’ and set forth with an alpenstock to climb mountains.” “A great comfort indeed,” says Charley, lazily.—Charley is Eric’s cousin, but not ours; and he and Sylvia have been quarreling and making love and tormenting each other ever since their childhood.—“You will wish for your silk dresses before you have been gone three days. Eric talks as if you were going into the wilderness, but that country has been a resort for fifty years, perhaps longer, and Asheville is decidedly a civilized place. I was there last summer, and I had the pleasure of seeing a great deal of fashion.” “Then we must take our trunks,” says Sylvia, alive to the importance of appearing as fashionable as her neighbors. “I thought we were only going to explore the mountains, but if we are likely to meet people—” “Of course you must take your trunks, my dear,” says Aunt Markham, decidedly. “One meets exceedingly nice people. Besides, it is always well to be prepared for emergencies.” “I shall take my gun,” says Rupert, following Charley’s example and flinging his long and rather awkward length of limb on the grass. It is impossible for anyone not to be awkward who is six feet high and only seventeen years old. “And is it definitely settled, then, that we will go to Western Carolina?” asks Sylvia. “All in favor of the motion please say ‘Ay.’ Very well,” as a rather languid but unanimous “Ay” responds.—“Now, Eric, tell us how to reach it.”