“Has anybody brought a pack of cards along?” asks Charley, sauntering up. “Let us have a game of euchre.” [Illustration: “Up we spring, and rush to the edge of the piazza.”] In the midst of this, and just as Sylvia is playing an exciting “lone hand,” there is another cry: “Here comes a man who has crossed Laurel!” Up we spring, and rush to the edge of the piazza. A man driving two horses in a jersey wagon is stopped by a storm of tumultuous questions. “Yes, I’m from the other side of Laurel,” he replies. “Forded the river?” asks the incredulous chorus. “No—ferried it in a canoe. I’ve been water-bound on the other side three days, and I couldn’t stand it any longer, so I took my wagon-body off the wheels, slipped it on the canoe, and swam the horses over.” “Eureka!” cries Eric, striking one hand on the other. “That is an idea for us! What has been done can be done again. If Laurel is still up to-morrow, I’ll take the carriages over in that way.” “You’ll run a great risk if you do,” says Mr. Lanier, who evidently does not know what reckless thing may be proposed or executed next. “A fig for the risk!” says Charley. “I’d quite as soon cross that way as another.” “And I would _rather_ cross that way!” cries Sylvia. “What fun it will be!” Mr. Lanier looks grave. Crossing swollen streams in a canoe is not his idea of fun. “Let us hope the stream may be down by to-morrow,” he says. We return to our game of euchre, but I cannot forget the width and general appearance of the wagon which was said to have been brought over on a canoe. “Eric,” I say, “these people must be talking about a boat—a constructed boat. They can’t possibly mean a dug-out.” “Our friend here will tell us,” says Eric. Then he turns to our first acquaintance—the man who lives five miles from the mouth of Laurel. “Is that craft of which you are all talking a dug-out?” he asks. “Yes, it’s a dug-out—hollowed from the trunk of a tree,” is the reply. “The tree must surely have grown in California,” says Sylvia. “No, madam,” is the answer. “I can find plenty of chestnuts ten feet in diameter on the Walnut Mountains just below here, and I’m almost sure I could find walnuts of the same size.” “There was a dug-out on the river here,” says our host, chiming in, “that I saw one day hold five men and a mule—and could a’ held more.” “There is no doubt of one thing,” says Eric—“this is one of the most splendidly timbered countries on the face of the globe.” “You don’t know what it is until you go out on the mountains,” says Mr. George. “There’s hardly a known tree that doesn’t grow here—and grow to the finest size. You’d not believe me if I were to tell you of what height and diameter I have seen the white pine.” “Yes, we would,” says Charley. “We are prepared to be enlightened, and ready to believe any thing.” A few more tree-stories are told, and then we ask the cause of the fishing mania which has seized all the population of the French Broad.