On the fourth day Nan planned a coaching party to ascend Mount Mitchell, the highest peak in the Land of the Sky, the highest point of ground this side the Rockies. She had taken this trip with Stuart sixteen years before. She was then but fifteen, and he had just begun to dangle at her heels. She did not tell him their destination, but left him to discover for himself that they were travelling over the same old quiet road. The party consisted of half a dozen boys and girls whom Nan was chaperoning, Stuart, the footman and coachman. The start was made at sunrise. The morning was glorious, the air rich with the full breath of a southern spring. The footman lifted the bugle to his lips, and its music rang over the hills and broke into a thousand echoes as its notes bounded upward from cliff to cliff. The whip cracked over the back of four sleek horses and they were off, amid screams of laughter from the youngsters. Stuart felt his heart leap with the joy of youth. The rivers and mountains, birds and fields of his native heath were calling once more, and his soul answered with a cry! At the foot of the first hill the coach suddenly stopped beside the banks of the Swannanoa River. Nan leaped to the ground, drew Stuart with her to the rear of the coach, and raised her arms. "Lift me up," she cried, laughing. He placed his hands under her arms and with a leap and a cry of laughter she was in the empty baggage rack. "Now up with you!" she cried. In a moment Stuart was seated snugly by her side and the big red coach was rolling along the old road beside the banks of the laughing river. "Now, sir," Nan whispered, "do you know where you are going?" Stuart nodded. "Where?" she asked, mischievously, as she laid her warm hand with a sudden grip on his. "To a certain peak among the clouds, where you and I once went a thousand years ago." Nan nestled a little closer--or perhaps it was the swaying of the coach that made him think she did--and softly said: "You remember this road?" "I've seen it a hundred times in my dreams since that wonderful day. It winds along the banks of the Swannanoa for twenty miles, always climbing higher and higher until the river becomes a limpid trout stream. We stop at the old road-house, stay all night, and next morning take the bridle path with the funny pack-horses and climb to the first mountain top, still following the little stream. We stoop to drink from the spring which is the river's source--a deep bold spring hung with long festoons of green moss and set with ferns and rhododendron----" "Fine, Jimmy, fine!" she cried with girlish mockery. "Your geography lesson was perfect! You can walk home with me after school." Stuart looked at her and broke into a laugh. Again they were boy and girl, and the only change he could see was that she was more splendidly beautiful at thirty-one than she had ever promised to be at fifteen.