Ashere

As for this, it happened long ago....                                         1Once, up in the high hills of Oconee, there lived a hermit. He was a strange and wild man, who rarely spoke or came down from his old house on the mountainside. It was whispered by some that he guarded some great treasure up there; a hoard of stolen confederate gold, a stream that sparkled with shining gems, or something even more precious. Whatever it might have been, none could pry a word about this treasure from the hermit on the few times he came down the hollow and into town. Eventually the hermit tired of the constant questions and declined to come at all....