'You name it. The song lines of the Australian Aboriginals. The oral traditions of the Cherokee. Camping. Fly-fishing. Greek mythology. A brief ethnography of the Carib Indians. Prentice was quite the Renaissance man. He penned three booklets and several articles that focused exclusively on the Appalachian Trail. Apparently Big P was a real mover in getting the trail started back in the twenties.'

Oh? A mecca for hikers and trekkers, the AT starts at Mount Katahdin in Maine and runs along the Appalachian ridgeline to Springer Mountain in Georgia. Much of the trail lies in the Great Smoky Mountains. Including Swain County.

'Are you stil there?'

'I'm here. Did Dashwood spend time here in North Carolina?'

'He wrote five pamphlets on the Great Smokies.' I heard paper rustle. 'Trees. Flowers. Fauna. Folklore. Geology.'

I remembered Anne's tale of her visit to West Wycombe, pictured the caves under the H&F house. Could this guy Anne was talking about be the Prentice Dashwood of Swain County, North Carolina? It was a striking name. Could there be a connection to the British Dashwoods?

'What else did you find out about Prentice Dashwood?'

'Not a thing. But I can tel you that old Uncle Francis hung with a wild crowd back in the eighteenth century. Caled themselves the Monks of Medmenham. Listen to the list. Lord Sandwich, who at one point commanded the Royal Navy, John Wilkes—'

'The politician?'

'Yep. Wiliam Hogarth, the painter, and poets Paul Whitehead, Charles Churchil, and Robert Lloyd.'

'Impressive roster.'

'Very. Everyone was a member of Parliament or the House of Lords. Or a poet or whatever. Our own Ben Franklin dropped in now and then, though he was never an official member.'

'What did these guys do?'

'Some accounts claim they engaged in satanic rites. According to the current Sir Francis, author of the booklet we picked up on our trip, the monks were just joly felows who got together to celebrate Venus and Bacchus. I take that to mean women and wine.'

'They held wild parties in the caves?'

'And at Medmenham Abbey. The current Sir Francis admits to his ancestor's sexual frolics but denies the devil worship. He suggests the satanism rumor came from the boys' somewhat irreverent attitude toward Christianity. They also referred to themselves as the Knights of Saint Francis, for example.'

I could hear her biting an apple, then chewing.

'Everyone else caled them the Hel Fire Club.'

The name hit me like a sledgehammer.

'What did you say?'

'The Hel Fire Club. Big in Ireland in the 1730s and 1740s. Same deal. Overprivileged devos mocking religion and getting drunk and laid.'

Anne had a way of cutting to the quick.

'There were attempts to suppress the clubs, but they weren't effective. When Dashwood gathered his little group of philanderers, the label Hel Fire naturaly transferred.'

Hel Fire. H&F.

I swalowed.