That we have such a charioteer is a matter for congratulation, since the appearance of the coach is not calculated to fill us with confident hopes of a safe journey. It is evidently old and much dilapidated. It is also heavily loaded. The boot is full of trunks, and as many are piled on top as can possibly be put there. Besides which, Aunt Markham has the anguish of beholding her largest and most valuable one standing on the ground, while the proprietor of the house informs her that Mr. Pence says he is overloaded, and that trunk cannot possibly “go over the Gap this trip.” [Illustration: John Pence.] “Mr. Pence!” repeats the lady, indignantly. “Who is Mr. Pence, pray? My trunk _shall_ go!—Eric, do you hear this?” “I hear, mother,” replies Eric, “but I don’t think there is any redress. The coach _is_ overloaded, and I should not consent for you to enter it as it stands if anybody but John Pence was going to drive. When you see the precipices past which that top-heavy vehicle must pass—” “Oh!” she says, turning pale, “if that is the case, tell him to take off my other trunk, and Sylvia’s and Alice’s also.” But Sylvia and Alice protest against this, and a Babel of confusion follows. It is Eric who summarily ends it. “Let me put you in the coach,” he says. “Leave the trunks to me. I will arrange for them to be sent over safely to-morrow.” Then the labor of stowing us away begins. There are already an old lady, a middle-aged lady, two children, and an elderly gentleman, within the coach. By the united efforts of Eric, Charley, and the host, Aunt Markham is lifted and deposited inside. She sinks into her seat with an apoplectic “How fearful!” I am lifted in next; but, when it comes to Sylvia’s turn, that young lady declines to enter. “I am going up aloft—like the cherub that watches over poor Jack,” she says.—“I know you don’t want me, Charley—you want to smoke. But Eric will take me with him—won’t you, Eric?” “I wonder if you think Eric doesn’t want to smoke?” says Charley. “He can if he chooses, and you, too, for that matter—so don’t look so disconsolate, but help me over this wheel.” She is assisted over the wheel, and elevated to the deck-seat. Charley sits down by her side, Eric springs to a place by the driver, that illustrious person cracks his long whip, the six horses start with one accord, the heavy coach sways. We are off. “Over the Mountains of the Moon, Down the valley of shadow, Ride, boldly ride, The shade replied, If you seek for El Dorado.” This is what Charley sings to an improvised air, as we rattle down a steep hill and cross a clear, flashing, rocky-bottomed stream. The mountains which we are going to scale rise in towering masses before us—splendid heights that seem to defy the locomotive at their base. The gentleman who is our fellow-passenger points out some of the unfinished railroad-work. Aunt Markham looks at it regretfully. “If only the road were finished to Asheville!” she says.