Close to the serried backbone of the Cumberland ridge through a sky ofmountain clarity, the sun seemed hesitating before its descent to thehorizon. The sugar-loaf cone that towered above a creek called Miserywas pointed and edged with emerald tracery where the loftiest timberthrust up its crest plumes into the sun. On the hillsides it would belight for more than an hour yet, but below, where the waters tossedthemselves along in a chorus of tiny cascades, the light was alreadythickening into a cathedral gloom. Down there the "furriner" would haveseen only the rough course of the creek between moss-velveted andshaded bowlders of titanic proportions. The native would haverecognized the country road in these tortuous twistings. Now there wereno travelers, foreign or native, and no sounds from living throatsexcept at intervals the clear "Bob White" of a nesting partridge, andthe silver confidence of the red cardinal flitting among the pines.Occasionally, too, a stray whisper of breeze stole along the creek-bedand rustled the beeches, or stirred in the broad, fanlike leaves of the"cucumber trees." A great block of sandstone, to whose summit a manstanding in his saddle could scarcely reach his fingertips, toweredabove the stream, with a gnarled scrub oak clinging tenaciously to itsapex. Loftily on both sides climbed the mountains cloaked in laurel andtimber.