It was all new to me; signs read riddles; tracks were sealed books; the
east winds brought rain, where at home they bring heaven's own balm to
us of the Spanish grants on the seaboard; the northwest winds that we
dread turn these Northern skies to sapphire, and set bees a-humming on
every bud.

There was no salt in the air, no citrus scent in the breeze, no heavy
incense of the great magnolia bloom perfuming the wilderness like a
cathedral aisle where a young bride passes, clouded in lace.

But in the heat a heavy, sweetish odor hung; balsam it is called, and
mingled, too, with a faint scent like our bay, which comes from a woody
bush called sweet-fern. That, and the strong smell of the bluish,
short-needled pine, was ever clogging my nostrils and confusing me. Once
I thought to scent a 'possum, but the musky taint came from a rotting
log; and a stale fox might have crossed to windward and I not noticed,
so blunted had grown my nose in this unfamiliar Northern world.

Musing, restless, dimly confused, and doubly watchful, I rode through
the timber-belt, and out at last into a dusty, sunny road. And
straightway I sighted a house.

The house was of stone, and large and square and gray, with only a
pillared porch instead of the long double galleries we build; and it had
a row of windows in the roof, called dormers, and was surrounded by a
stockade of enormous timbers, in the four corners of which were set
little forts pierced for rifle fire.

Noble trees stood within the fortified lines; outside, green meadows
ringed the place; and the grass was thick and soft, and vivid as a green