"Now, Mama, it's almost sundown; you get ready to go. I want her awhile to show her about my things."
She took Elsie shyly by the hand and led her into the lawn, while her mother paid a visit to each room, and made up the last bundle of odds and ends she meant to carry to the hotel.
"I hope you will love the place as we do," said the girl, simply.
"I think it very beautiful and restful," Elsie replied. "This wilderness of flowers looks like fairyland. You have roses running on the porch around the whole length of the house."
"Yes, Papa was crazy over the trailing roses, and kept planting them until the house seems just a frame built to hold them, with a roof on it. But you can see the river through the arches from three sides. Ben Cameron helped me set that big beauty on the south corner the day he ran away to the war"
"The view is glorious!" Elsie exclaimed, looking in rapture over the river valley.
The village of Piedmont crowned an immense hill on the banks of the Broad River, just where it dashes over the last stone barrier in a series of beautiful falls and spreads out in peaceful glory through the plains toward Columbia and the distant sea. The muffled roar of these falls, rising softly through the trees on its wooded cliff, held the daily life of the people in the spell of distant music. In fair weather it soothed and charmed, and in storm and freshet rose to the deep solemn growl of thunder.
The river made a sharp bend as it emerged from the
