Springtime is enchanting in any clime but in the Tennessee mountains it is like fairyland.  The birds were giving a morning concert, the bees were humming all about the place.  The apple trees were in full blossom and their dainty pink and white petals floated in the sweet morning air filling it with a fragrance that one never forgets.  These thrifty Shraders had not only an apple orchard, but a peach orchard too and plum trees everywhere were bursting in a glory of white bloom as though they were trying to vie with the cherry blossoms on the good old fashioned black heart cherry trees all about the place.

In every direction Polly beheld beauty of blooming trees, for the mountain sides to the south of her were white with dogwood blossom reminding her of a bride adorned for her husband, the dark background of the cedars of Cedar Bluff made the entire homestead look like an enchanted fairyland of mystic beauty and Polly looked like its queen, which she, in all probability was, because many of the people of this section are of royal blood.  The beauty of this spring morn had overcome the girl almost and she felt "deliciously" happy, just being alive.

She knew not why, she seemed to be in a reverie and was constantly looking toward the road that led to the east and the west, which was about one-fourth of a mile from where she sat and toward the north from her home.  It was the old Indian war path that had been made into a roadway and was a cloud of dust in summer and a bog of mud in winter, but she wondered where it would take her if she should follow it some time; she had always wanted to ride to the end of it.

As she mused thusly of the roadway wondering if "it ended in some distance dim, where a limpid river rippled beyond the rainbow's rim", she saw coming from the East a rider.  She shaded her eyes with her hand to see if she could recognize the horse from its color, or its gait, as she knew most of the horses quite well in her neighborhood.  She noticed that the man sat his horse like an Indian and that he was riding rather slowly as though he were enjoying the morning in all its dewy fragrance.  Possibly it could be a stranger coming to inquire the distance to some locality in that vicinity.

Joy, of Joys!  He lifted his hat and waved it toward her and then she recognized him even though he happened to be riding a horse she had never before seen.  She thought he might come in the afternoon, as he often did, on the Sabbath day, but she did not even dream he would come in the early morning; and she was thrilled and rushed down from the bluff and walked toward him.