Constant Hite was rarely at a loss. When other men were fain to come to a pause for the lack of information, the resources of his agile substitutions and speculations were made manifest. "They war jes' runnin' a few lines hyar an' thar," he said negligently. "They lef' some tall striped poles planted in the ground, red an' sich colors, ter mark the way; an' them mounting folks over yander in the furderest coves,--they air powerful ahint the times,--they hed never hearn o' sech ez a survey, noway, an' the poles jes' 'peared ter them sprung up thar like Jonah's gourd in a single night, ez ef they kem from seed; an' the folks, they 'lowed 't war the sign o' a new war." He laughed lazily at the uninstructed terrors of the unsophisticated denizens of the "furderest coves." "They'd gather around an' stare-gaze at the poles, an' wonder if they'd hev ter fight the Rebs agin; them folks is mos'ly Union." Then his interest in the subject quickening, "Them survey fellers, they ondertook, too, ter medjure the tallness o' some o' the mountings fur the gover'mint. Now what good is that goin' ter do the Nunited States?" he resumed grudgingly. "The mountings kin be medjured by the eye,--look a-yander." He pointed with the end of his whip at a section of the horizon, visible between the fringed and low-swaying boughs of hemlock and fir as the trail swept closer to the verge of the range, on which was softly painted, as on ivory and with an enameled lustre, two or three great azure domes, with here and there the high white clouds of a clear day nestling flakelike on the summits. "They air jes' all-fired high, an' that's all. Do it make 'em seem enny taller ter say they air six thousand or seben thousand feet? Man ain't used ter medjurin' by the thousand feet. When he gits ter the ground he goes by the pole. I dunno how high nor how long a thousand feet air. The gover'mint jes' want ter spend a leetle money, I reckon. It 'pears toler'ble weak-kneed in its mind, wunst in a while. But ef it wants ter fool money away, it's mighty well able ter afford sech. It hev got a power o' ways a-comin' at money,--we all know that, we all know that." He said this with a gloomy inflection and a downward look that might have implied a liability for taxes beyond his willingness to pay. But, barring the assessment on a small holding of mountain land, Constant Hite seemed in case to contribute naught to his country's exchequer. "It needs all it can get, now," replied the stranger casually, but doubtless from a sophisticated knowledge, as behooved a reader of the journals of the day, of the condition of the treasury.