The Summit House Mystery: The Earthly Purgatory

In the southern part of the Appalachian Mountains the tree-clad ridges fold and coil about one another. In this wooded wilderness the trend of each slope, the meandering of each stream, take unlooked-for turnings, and the valleys cross and twist. It is such a region as we often find in dreams, where the unexpected bars the way or opens out into falling vistas down which our souls must speed, chasing some hope or chased by unknown fears. On a certain day a man called Neil Durgan passed through the village of Deer Cove, in the mountains of Northern Georgia. When he had left the few wooden buildings and the mill round which they clustered, he took a path by the foaming mill-stream and ascended the mountain of Deer. For more than a century before the freeing of the slaves, the Durgans had been one of the proudest and richest families of Georgia. This man was the present head of the house, sole heir to the loss of all its lands and wealth. He was growing old now. Disappointment, Poverty, and Humility walked with him. Yet Joy, the fugitive, peeped at him through the leafless forest, from the snow-flakes of the dogwood and from the violets in the moss, laughed at him in the mountain torrent, and wooed him with the scent of the warming earth. Humility caught and kissed the fleeting spirit, and led her also in attendance upon the traveller's weary feet. Deer Cove is more than two thousand feet in altitude; Deer Mountain rises a thousand feet above. Half-way up, Durgan came to the cabin of a negro called Adam. According to the usage of the time, the freedman's surname was Durgan, because he had been born and bred on the Durgan estates. Adam was a huge black negro. He and Durgan had not met since they were boys. Adam's wife set a good table before the visitor. She was a quadroon, younger, lithe and attractive. Both stood and watched Durgan eat—Adam dumb with pleasure, the negress talking at times with such quick rushes of soft words that attentive listening was necessary. "Yes, Marse Neil, suh; these ladies as lives up here on Deer, they's here for their health—they is. Very nice ladies they is, too; but they's from the North! They don't know how to treat us niggers right kind as you does, suh! They's allus for sayin' 'please' an' 'thank 'e,' and 'splaining perjinks to Adam an' me. But ef you can't board with these ladies, marsa, ther's no place you can live on Deer—no, there ain't, suh." Durgan had had his table set before the door, and ate looking at the chaos of valleys, domes, and peaks which, from this height, was open to the view. The characteristic blue haze of the region was over all. The lower valleys in tender leaf had a changeful purple shimmer upon them, as seen in the peacock's plumage. The sun rained down white light from a fleecy sky. The tree-tops of the slope immediately beneath them were red with sap.