There was but one passenger, who sat on the seat by the driver.
They had been several hours on the road, following the White Branch of the Connecticut upwards to its source in the still uninvaded forest belt. The hill-slopes behind the valley farms, through which they passed, were gay with hundreds of hop-pickers in their red and white head-kerchiefs, their plaid shoulder-shawls or blue-jean blouses. To the traveller, looking upward to the slopes from the road, the poles with their largess of rioting vine and delicate green blossoms seemed to lean from out the clear, sun-filled sky of deep blue. Shout, and laughter, and waving of kerchiefs and sunbonnets greeted the passing of the Hornet.
Farther on, the entire population of the small factory village of Scawsville swarmed at the noon hour before the one store in the place—"department" on a small scale, and post-office and barber's shop to boot—to await the arrival of the Alderbury stage.
Five miles beyond, on the slope that rises behind the Bend,—that sharp turn of the mighty White Branch at right angles to the north, where it rushes downwards through the straight five miles of mountain gorge,—lay the deserted hamlet of the Old Church Settlement: a half dozen of dilapidated houses clustered about the abandoned House of God and its well-filled graveyard. The white walls and white headstones dominated the valley below, cast and west, for miles.
At sight of it the driver, whose loquacity was spasmodic, grew reminiscent. He shifted the quid
