Chit-Chat



call instead of telephoning. I shall be disappointed if you
do not accept my offer."
   "I thank you and I will take it up with mother to-
night, then call at your room at 8:30 in the morning.
Please excuse me now as I am due at the office."
                     
   Mr. Rogers and John Cornwall, several days later,
arrived at Pineville on the early morning train and after
lunch left on horseback, taking the Straight Creek road
to Harlan.
   It was not their intention to ride through that after-
noon, but stop overnight at Simeon Saylor's and the
following morning look over the Helton, Saylor and
Brock coal properties on the south or main fork of the
creek.
   The road follows the creek and is canopied by syca-
more, elm and birch trees or grape vines and other creep-
ers. It is screened by thickets of pawpaw, blackberry,
sumac or elderberry bushes which grow thick in the
corners of the abutting worm fences.
   It is not a lonely way. Every three or four hundred
yards you pass a small mountain farmhouse overflowing
with children, calling to mind the home of the old woman
who lives in the shoe. Many squads of geese, following
their corporal, march across the road towards the creek
or back again to the barnyard. The thickets are alive
with red birds and ground robins and an occasional
squirrel, who has come down the mountain for a drink,
rustles the leaves in his flight or at giddy heighth barks
defiance at passing strangers.
   Pine Mountain, without a break or scarce a deep cove,
walls in the narrow valley on the south, while on the
north smaller mountains stand at attention. The stream,



4