It was while on a mountain climbing trip in the French Alps, when stormstayed at a small inn at Grenoble, that a chance acquaintance showed The Viscount Adare a copy of “The Travels of Thomas Ashe,” a book which had recently appeared in London and created a sensation in the tourist world. The Viscount had already perused “Travels Beyond the Alleghenies,” by the younger Michaux, but the volume by Ashe, so full of human interest, more than sharpened his old desire to travel in the United States, now that a stable peace between the young republic and the Mother Country was a matter of some years standing.

The mountains, as described by both Michaux and Ashe, seemed stupendous and inspiring, wild game and mighty forests were everywhere, and a glimpse might be caught of the vanishing redmen, without journeying as far west as the Mississippi River.

Thomas Ashe excelled in descriptions of the life along the mountain highways, though nothing could be more vivid than Michaux’s pen picture of his feast on venison cooked on the coals on the hearth at Statler’s stone tavern on the Allegheny summits, near Buckstown. This ancient hostelry is, by the way, still standing, though misnamed “The Shot Factory,” by modern chroniclers, much to the disgust of the accurate historian of Somerset County, George W. Grove.

All during his trip among the Alps of Savoy, and Dauphiny, The Viscount Adare was planning the excursion to Pennsylvania. His love of wild scenery was one compelling reason, but perhaps another was Ashe’s description of his meeting and brief romance with the beautiful Eleanor Ancketell, daughter of the innkeeper on the Broad Mountain, above Upper Strasburg, Franklin County.

It was well along in August, the twenty-first to be exact, when Ashe’s book was first shown to him, therefore it seemed impracticable to make the journey that year, but the time would soon roll around, and be an ideal outing for the ensuing summer. From the time of his return to London, until almost the date set for the departure, The Viscount Adare busied himself reading every book of American travel and adventure that he could lay his hands on, besides accumulating a vast outfit to take along, although the trip was to be on foot, and without even a guide.

Needless to say, with such an interesting objective, the year passed very rapidly, not that The Viscount had no other interests, for he had many, being a keen sportsman and scientist, as well as a lover of books, paintings and the drama.

It was on the twenty-third of August, a little over a year after his first acquaintance with the writings of Ashe, that The Viscount embarked for Philadelphia, on the fast sailing ship “Ocean Queen.” Very few Englishmen went to America for pleasure in those days as the sting of the Revolution was still a thorn in their sides. Many Britishers did go, but they were mostly of the commoner sort, immigrants, not tourists.

The Viscount Adare, even before sailing, had his itinerary pretty well mapped out. He would tarry a week in Philadelphia to get rid of his “sea legs,” then proceed by carriage to Louisbourg, then beginning to be called Harrisburg, and go from there to Carlisle, Shippensburg, and Upper Strasburg, at which last named place he would abandon his conveyance, and with pack on back, in true Alpine fashion, start overland, traversing the same general direction of Michaux and Ashe towards Pittsburg. At Pittsburg he planned to board a flat boat and descend the Ohio, thence into the Mississippi, proceeding to New Orleans, at which city he could set sail for England.

It was an ambitious trip for a solitary traveler, but as he was known by his Alpinist friends as “The Guideless Wonder,” some indication may be divined of his resourcefulness.

The journey across the Atlantic was interesting. A school of whales played about the ship, coming so close as to create the fear that they would overturn it. The Captain, a shrewd Irishman, was not to be daunted, so he ordered a number of huge barrels or casks thrown overboard, which immediately diverted the attention of the saurians, with the result that a smart breeze coming up, they were left far astern.

A boat, said to be a pirate, was sighted against the horizon, but fortunately made no attempt to come close, heading away towards the Summer Islands, where, say the older generation of mountain folks, arise all the warm south breezes that often temper wintry or early spring days in the Pennsylvania Highlands, with blue sky and fleecy clouds.

The Viscount Adare was pleased with these trifling adventures, and more so with ocean travel, as it was his first long sea voyage, though he had crossed the Channel and the Irish Sea scores of times.

He debarked in Philadelphia after a voyage lasting nearly six weeks, consequently the green foliage of England was replaced by the vivid tints of Autumn on the trees which grew in front of the rows of brick houses near the Front Street Landing Wharf. He had letters to the British Consul, who was anxious to arrange a week or two of social activity for the distinguished traveler, but The Viscount assured him that he must be on his way.

The ride in public coaches to Lancaster and Harrisburg was accomplished without incident. His fellow travelers were anxious to point out the various places of interest, the fine corn crops, livestock and farm buildings, but the Englishman was so anxious to get to the wilds that this interlude only filled him with impatience.

He was impressed not a little by the battlefields of Paoli and Brandywine, but most of all by the grove where the harmless Conestoga Indians were encamped when surprised and massacred by the brutal Paxtang Boys. The word “Indians” thrilled him, and whetted his curiosity, which was somewhat appeased on his arrival at Harrisburg by the sight of five Indians in full regalia, lying on the grass under John Harris’ Mulberry Tree, waiting to be ferried across the river.

He tarried only one night at Harrisburg, then hiring a private conveyance, started down the Cumberland Valley, where he most admired the many groves of tall hardwoods–resting at Carlisle and Shippensburg–as originally planned. At Carlisle, he was waited on at his inn by a German woman, who explained to him that she was none other than “Molly Pitcher,” or Molly Ludwig, the intrepid heroine of the Battle of Monmouth.

It was on a bright autumnal morning that, with pack on back, and staff in hand, he started for the heights of Cove Mountain, towards the west country. On the way he passed a small roadside tavern, in front of which a few years before had played a little yellow-haired boy, with a turkey bell suspended around his neck so that he could not get lost. The German drovers who lolled in front of the hostelry were fond of teasing the lad, calling him “Jimmy mit the bells on,” much to the youngster’s displeasure. His mother was a woman of some intellectual attainments, and occasionally would edify the society folk of Mercersburg by reciting the whole of Milton’s “Paradise Lost.”

In time this boy became known as James Buchanan, the only Pennsylvanian to occupy the Presidential chair.

There were many taverns along the road, considering the wildness of the country, and The Viscount thought how much history and tradition was being made about their inglenooks and home-garths.home-garths. The forests of chestnuts, yellow pine and rock oak, the grand scenery of distant valleys and coves, interested him more, and the occasional meetings with the mountain people along the way, whom he enjoyed conversing with, about the local folk-lore, game and Indians. On many of the log barns and sheds were nailed bear paws, deer horns and wolf hides, and the hieroglyphics and signs, to ward off witches, were keenly interesting to his inquiring gaze.

It was amazing how the road wound in serpentine fashion among the mountains; the distance could have been much shortened, he thought.

One morning a backwoodsman with a black beard that hung almost to his feet, explained to him the “short cuts,” or paths that went down the steep slopes of the mountains, lessening the distance of the regular roads followed by the packers around the elbows of the mountain ravines.

The Viscount Adare enjoyed these “short cuts” hugely. They reminded him of his Alpining days, and they led him right through the forests, under the giant oaks and pines where he saw many unusual looking birds, such as Pileated Woodpeckers and Carolina Paraquets, while occasionally a Deer or Gray Fox crossed his path. He had reached the bottom of a ravine where a stream headed at a big spring, while taking one of these “short cuts,” when he came in sight of a clearing which contained a corn field, a pasture lot or commons, a log house, log barn, and a smaller log cabin, that looked like a smoke-house. Smoke was issuing from an opening in the roof of the tiny structure, which might have passed for a child’s play house, modelled after the larger log dwelling. As he neared the little hut, which reminded him of an Alpine baracq, and which stood close to the path, the door opened and two most curious looking figures emerged. In old England he had seen sweeps, but these were more grotesque and grimier than any he could recall. As he drew nearer, he perceived that while one appeared to be a man, the other was a young woman. Both were entirely unclad, save that the woman’s locks were covered by a homespun cap of the tam o’shantero’shanter pattern. Both were literally black, from head to foot.

When they saw the traveler, the woman ran back into the cabin, pulling the door shut, while the “Jim Crow” man waited in the path until joined by the surprisedsurprised Viscount.

“What is all this, my good man,” he queried, “been cleaning your chimney and fallen through it into a barrel of tar?”

“Oh, no,” said the grimy mountaineer, smiling, his teeth looking very white against his swarthy visage. “My business is to make lamp black, and my friend and I have been sweeping down the walls, collecting the output this morning, and boxing it, and had just finished when you appeared in sight.”

The fellow made no attempt to apologize for his outlandish appearance, but stood there in the sunlight like an imp of darkness, chatting with the Englishman.

“I don’t want to keep your lady friend penned up in there any longer,” said The Viscount, as he started to move away.

“Oh, don’t go,” said the maker of lamp black, “I don’t know why she acts that way; stay and have dinner with us. We never let a stranger go by without furnishing him with some food.”

Ordinarily, The Viscount Adare, unconventional as he was, would have scurried away from such grimy surroundings, but there was something that appealed to him about the lamp black maker’s lady, even in her coat of ebony grime, that made him decide to tarry.

“Thanks, I will stay,” he replied, “but I’ll go to the barn so as to give your ‘friend,’ as you call her, a chance to come out.”

“Don’t you bother to do that,” said the black man. “She is acting foolish today; don’t give her the satisfaction to move a step. She never minded showing herself to anybody before.”

These last words were secretly pleasing to the Viscount, as it showed that the young woman recognized in him a person of superior sensibilities, but he hurried to the barn until he knew that she had been given time to escape to the house. But he could not help hearing the lamp black maker loudly chiding her for modesty, a trait she had never displayed previously. Pretty soon he saw the fellow making trips to the spring, carrying water buckets into the house. The Viscount sat on the doorstep of the barn, watching the juncos flying about among the savin bushes in the clearing, or his eyes feasting on the cornelian red foliage of the sassafras trees on the hill, inwardly speculating if with her black disguise washed off, the young woman, whose higher nature he had aroused, would be as good looking as he imagined her to be. He made a mental picture of her loveliness, ranking her close beside that of high bred beauties of his own land, of the types depicted by Romney, Kneller and Lely.

It was not long before he saw her emerge from the house, all washed and scrubbed, with her hair neatly combed, clad in a spick and span “butternut” frock. As she came towards him, he noted that she was a trifle above the average height, and her feet, despite the rough brogans she wore, were very small. He saw, to his amazement, that she was the counterpart of his mental picture, only more radiantly lovely. When she drew near, she asked him, her face lighting up very prettily, as she spoke, if he would like to come to the house to rest, that she would soon prepare dinner, and hoped that he would not be too critical of her humble efforts as a cook.

Her eyes seldom met his, but he could see that they were large and grey-brown, with delicately penciled black brows, and black lashes. Her face was rather long and sallow, or rather of a pinkish pallor. Her hair was cameo brown, her nose long and straight, the lines of her mouth delicate and refined, with lips unusually thin. He had noticed, as she came towards him, that her slender form swayed a little forward as she walked, reminding him of the mythical maiden Syrinx, daughter of the River God, whom the jealous-hearted Pan changed into a reed.

The Viscount Adare was far more disconcerted than his hostess, as he followed her to the log house. Just as they approached the door she whispered, “I hope that you will forgive the awful exhibition I made of myself.”

Indoors she sat down on one of the courting blocks by the great open hearth, where pots of various sizes hung from the cranes. The man, who was still trying to get the lamp black out of his curly hair and beard, was only partially dressed, and looked all the world like pictures of the lascivious Lupercalian Pan himself.

The Englishman felt strangely at ease in the cabin, watching the slender, reed-like girl prepare the meal, and enjoyed the dinner with his humble entertainers.

Shortly after the repast another bearded backwoodsman appeared at the door. The lamp black maker had an appointment to go with him to some distant parts of the Shade Mountains to examine bear pens, and asked to be excused. He would not be back until the next day; it was nothing unusual for him to leave his friend alone for a week at a time on similar excursions.

The Viscount was in no hurry to go, as never had a woman appealed to him as did the lamp black maker’s young assistant. Perhaps it was the unconventional character of their first meeting that shocked his love into being; at any rate he was severely smitten; probably John Rolfe was no more so, on his first glimpse of the humane Pocohontas.

After the two hunters had gone, the young woman sat down on the other courting block, on the opposite of the inglenook, and The Viscount decided to ask her to tell him the story of her life. She colored a trifle, saying that no one had ever been interested in her life’s history before, therefore, she might not repeat it very well.

She had been born at sea, of parents coming from the northern part of Ireland. They had settled first in the Cumberland Valley, then, when she was about a dozen years old, decided to migrate to Kentucky. They had not gotten much further than the covered bridge across the Little Juniata, when they were ambushed by robbers, and all the adult members of the party, her parents and an uncle, were slain. The children were carried off, being apportioned among the highwaymen. She fell to the lot of the leader of the band, Conrad Jacobs, who took more than a fatherly interest in her.

He was a middle-aged married man, but he openly said that when the girl was big enough, he would chase his wife away and install her in her place. But she was kindly treated by the strange people, even more so than at home, for her mother had been very severe and unreasonable.

When she was fifteen she saw signs that the outlaw was going to put his plan into effect–to drive his wife out into the forest, like an old horse–and probably would have done so, but for Simon Supersaxo, the lamp black man, who came to the highwayman’s shanty frequently on his hunting trips.

The robber became jealous of the young Nimrod and threatened to shoot him if he came near the premises again. A threat was as good as a promise with such people, so Supersaxo was ready to kill or be killed on sight.

He met the highwayman one evening in front of McCormick’s Tavern, and drawing the bead, shot him dead. He was not arrested, but feted by all the innkeepers for ridding the mountains of a dangerous deterrent to travel, while she, her name was Deborah Conner, went to help keep house for him, along with the outlaw’s widow, but in reality to help make lamp black.

That was four years before. Since old Mother Jacobs had died and Deborah, now nineteen years of age, was being importuned by Supersaxo to marry him.

Previous to the Englishman’s coming that morning, she had never felt any shame at working in the lamp black hut with her employer, or appearing before passers-by unclad, but now a great light had come to her; she was free to confess that she was changed and humiliated.

The Viscount looked her over and over, and far into those wonderful stone grey eyes that mirrored a refined soul lost in the wilderness. Then he made bold to speak:

“Deborah”, he said, “since you have been so frank with me in telling the story of your life, I will freely confess to you that I loved you the minute my eyes rested on you, even in your unbecoming homespun cap, and lamp black from head to foot. I realize that your being here is but an accident, and my coming the instrument to take you away. I will marry you, and strive always to make you happy, if you will come away with me, and I will take you to England where, among people of refined tastes, you will shine and always be at peace.”

Deborah opened her thin delicate mouth in surprise, and her eyes became like grey stars. “Really, do you mean that”? she said.

“I mean every word,” replied The Viscount Adare.

“I know that I feel differently towards you than any man I have seen, so I must love you, and I will always be happy with you,” resumed the girl. “And while I owe Simon Supersaxo a deep debt of gratitude for saving me from being forced into marrying that horrid old road-agent, I owe myself more, and you more still. I will go with you whenever you are ready to take me, no matter what my conscience will tell me later. Though I’ll say to you honestly that I never thought there was any life for me further than to make lamp black, until you came.”

She explained to him that at Christmastime the lamp black man always went with a party of companions on a great elk hunt to the distant Sinnemahoning Country, and if The Viscount would return then, she would arrange to meet him at a certain place at a certain day and hour, and go away with him. “There is a little clearing or old field on the top of the ridge, beyond this house,” and pointing her slender white hand, showed to him through the open door. “Meet me there on the day before Christmas, and I will be free to go away with you rejoicing.”

The balance of the visit was passed in pleasant amity, until towards nightfall, when The Viscount shouldered his pack and seized his staff, and started away, not for Pittsburg, but eastward again. Deborah, her slender reed-like figure swaying in the autumn breeze, walked with him to the edge of the clearing. She kissed him goodbye among the savin bushes, and he kissed her many times in return, until they parted at the carnelian-leafed sassafras trees on the hill, and he commenced the ascent of the steep face of Chestnut Ridge.

The trip back to Philadelphia was taken impatiently, but with a different kind of impatience; he wanted the entire intervening time obliterated, until he could get back to his strange exotic mountain love. In Philadelphia he engaged passage for England the first week in January, and wrote letters abroad to complete the arrangements for taking his wife-to-be to his ancestral home. He could never forget the last afternoon in the Quaker City. Christmas was coming, and the spirit of this glad festival was in the air, even more so than in “Merrie England.” He was walking through Chancellor Street when he came upon two blind Negro Christmas-singers, former sailors, who had lost their sight in the premature explosion of a cannon on the deck of a frigate on the Delaware River during the Revolutionary War. He stopped, elegant gentleman that he was, listened enraptured to their songs of simple faith: “Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow.”

“If they had so much to be thankful for,” he mused, “how much more have I, with lovely Deborah only a few days in the future.”future.”

Then he gave them each five shillings and moved on. A little further down the street, he met an old Negro Woman selling sprigs of holly with bright red berries. He bought a sprig. “I’ll take it to Deborah,” he said to himself.

He returned to Harrisburg by the stage coach, accompanied by a Negro body-servant well recommended by the British Consul. At Harrisburg he purchased four extra good horses. With these and the Negro he retraced his previous journey. He left the Negro and the horses at McCormick’s Tavern, continuing the balance of the journey on foot, his precious sprig of holly, with the bright red berries, fastened on the top of his staff, that had often been decked with the edelweiss and the Alpine rose. Deborah had said that she knew all the mountain paths back to McCormick’s, so they could reach there quickly, and be mounted on fast horses almost before her employer missed them.

His heart was beating fast as he neared his trysting place, the little clearing on the ridge, the morning before Christmas. Peering through the trees, he observed that Deborah was not there, but surely she would soon come, the sun was scarcely over the Chestnut Ridge to the east! A grey fog hung over the valley, obscuring the little cabin in the cove.

He waited and waited all day long, but no Deborah appeared. He walked all over the top of the ridge to see if there were other clearings, lest he had gotten to the wrong one. There were no others, just as she had said. Cold beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead; he was angry; he was jealous; the day was closing bitterly cold. “The woman that I want, she will not come.”

Finally as the sun was going down behind the western summits of the Alleghenies, he untied the sprig of holly from the end of his mountain-staff, and bending over, stuck it in the fast freezing earth, a symbol of his faithless adventure, and started down the mountain, straight towards Deborah Supersaxo’s cabin.

At the foot of the hill he met her coming towards him–her face was deadly pale, her thin lips white as death–instantly his hate changed to tender love again.

“Kill me if you wish,” she cried out before he had time to speak, and held out her arms to show her non-resistance, “for I have been unworthy. I broke my faith with you, and was not going to come; I repented at leaving Supersaxo, who had been so good to me when I was in distress. I was going to leave you in the lurch. Then, then,” and here tears trickled down her ghastly cheeks, “I was sitting on the courting log by the fire, commending myself for my loyalty, when a few minutes ago one of his friends came in to say that the day before yesterday, while looking at somebody’s bear pen near the Karoondinha, it fell in on him and broke his neck. I was just coming up the hill to tell you, if you were still waiting, how wicked I had been to you, and how I had been punished. Kill me if you wish, I can never be happy any more.”

The Viscount Adare did not hesitate a moment, but flinging down his staff, he rushed to the girl and caught her in his arms. “Doubly blessed are we this night, dear Deborah, for there is now no impediment to our happiness; no misdirected sense of duty can cast a shadow on the joy that lies before us. I want you now more than ever before, after this final trial, and you must come with me!”

“Never say must again,” said Deborah, sweetly, looking up into his eyes, “I am your willing slave; I will go with you to the ends of the earth: I want to redeem this day by years of devotion, years of love.”

Picking up his staff, The Viscount Adare and the mountain girl resumed their journey, past the now deserted log house and the lamp black shack where they had first met, up the steep mountain, and off towards McCormick’s Tavern, near where, in a deep pine grove, the Negro body-servant would be waiting with the horses.

That is all that has been recorded in the mountains concerning the lamp black girl and The Viscount Adare. In England there is an oil painting of a certain Viscountess of the name that bears a striking resemblance to the one time Deborah Conner.

Up on the ridge, in the little clearing, one or more of the seeds of the sprig of holly took root, and grew a fine tree. In order that this story may be localized, it is said that this is one of the points furthest north of any specimen of the native holly in Pennsylvania. In time it died off, but not before other scions sprang up, and there has always been a thrifty holly tree on the hill, as if to commemorate a lover’s tryst, whose heart when on the point of breaking from hideous despair, found the fullness of his happiness suddenly, and whose story is an inspiration to all aching hearts.