“Afeerd? Why should I be afeerd, womern? I reckon I’ll never see the day when I’ll be afeerd to ride a mewel that fer an’ back, if I want ter.” And, indeed, when on the following day they embarked for their journey, the old dame herself sat carelessly, with one skinny knee across the horn of her man’s saddle, thrust almost up into her face as she perched, a bag on one arm and a basket on the other, and smoked her pipe in perfect contentment as she rode. “Ye like enough don’t know much about mewels,” said she, “bein’ a furrin womern. Mewels is best fer the mountings. They’ll just walk along if ye leave ‘em be. All ye got to do is to foller right behind me, an’ keep yore beast a-walkin’ right peart.” The full foliage of the vernal season now covered all the mountains. The stream, idling and loitering, broke into rapids over rock ledges, or swum out into wide, still pools under the far-flung fringes of the elms and beaches. As they rode, Granny Williams told the story of this place or that. “Over in yander house,” she said, nodding her sunbonnet in the direction indicated, “is a woman lives that’s got six sons, ary one of ‘em over six foot two inch tall. An’ not one of ‘em nuvver had a father. Old times, folks that lived fer back in couldn’t always git a preacher noways. Shouldn’t wonder if they got merried some day even yit, now the railroad’s come. But sakes! me a-talkin’ that way! I reckon I’d better wet my finger an’ touch the top of my left air. Ye see, Ma’am, if ye wet yore finger an’ rub the top of yore left air, that makes folks bite their tongue when they talk about ye. Didn’t ye know that? Ye furrin wimmern certainly is plumb ignorant, hain’t ye?” “Go on,” said Marcia Haddon, chuckling to herself. “Tell me some more, Granny.” “Not much to tell about these mountings, Ma’am—nothin’ ever did happen here much. Hit’s a settled sort of country. Now, over thar ye see that pile of logs, like? That’s whar Old Man Stallings used to hev a barn. He never did git no roof on the barn, nohow, though fer thirty year he was a-plannin’ about it. He used to set right thar on that log jest below the ridge, an’ look at that barn, an’ wish thar was a roof on it. He done that fer thirty year, an’ then he died. So that’s how come the barn to rot down that way. “Now, over yander on the creek is whar Preacher Bonnell’s pa used to live. He was about the fightin’est preacher we ever did have in here—always used to ride with a Bible an’ a pistol an’ a bottle of liquor in his saddlebags when he was out a-preachin’. One day he rid twenty mile over the mountings to Newfound jest to shoot a man. The co’te finded him fifty dollars. That’s too much to fine a preacher. We all allowed twenty dollars’d been plenty.