To
MRS. J. B. MARVIN

Whose unceasing devotion to the cause
of education in the mountains of
Kentucky
inspired this little story

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

The Boy From Hollow Hut

The rabbit bounded away and was lost in the underbrush. Steve stood looking disgustedly after him, a limp figure, one shoulder dropping until the old knit suspender fell at his side, and a sullen, discouraged look settling in his brown eyes.

“I ain’ no hunter noways. Peers lack I don’t even know ’nough to ketch a rabbit,” he said with scorn. “Whar’s that lazy Tige anyways?” he added, his scorn merging into wrath.

Then jerking the old suspender in place he straightened up on his sturdy, bare feet, and darted through the underbrush in the direction where the rabbit had disappeared.

“I’ll ketch you yit, yes I will, you same old cottontail,” he muttered through clenched teeth.

“Huh! thought you’d git away from me, did ye?” said the boy, picking up the still body. “I reckons I kin do some things yit,” he said, “ef I don’t know much.”

The boy was in a strange, new mood. He did not understand himself. Though a good hunter for a lad of twelve he had been heretofore a generous friend or conqueror of the fur and feathered folk, wont to deal gently with a fallen foe. Now he jerked up the limp body of the rabbit savagely and struck its head spitefully against a near-by tree trunk.

“I kin kill rabbits ef I can’t do nothin’ else.”

Just then a big black and tan dog came into view with the dignity befitting age. Boy and dog had been born the same month, but while one was scarcely well entered upon life, the other’s race was almost run. The boy was usually most considerate of the infirmities of his lifelong friend, but to-day he scolded the dog till with drooping tail and grieved, uncomprehending eyes he slunk away out of sight.

The man of the new, strange species smiled at the boy’s gaping mouth and wonder-wide eyes.

“Well, son,” he said pleasantly, “are you a sportsman too?”

The quick, clear, cultured voice, the unfamiliar accent was so utterly foreign to anything the boy had ever heard that he could not take in the import of the words, and amazed silence was his only reply.

“Wal,” drawled the mountain guide, “who’d er thought er seein’ a chap lack that heah? Whar’d you come from anyways?”

This was familiar vernacular, and Steve, rising slowly from the ground, and allowing Tige to make friendly acquaintance with the strangers, said:

“I lives at Hollow Hut and I comes over here whenever I pleases. Whar’d you uns come from?”

The man gave a hearty but musical laugh at the ready dignity of the reply, but the boy’s mouth dropped once more in consternation, as words came again in crisp, foreign accent.

“I came from the city, my lad, to get some of your fine quail and deer. You are willing I should have a few, are you not? My friend here is showing me the way.”

The mountain folk had proved a most entertaining study for this sportsman, and his interest was ready for each new specimen encountered. Turning to the guide he said:

“Suppose we lunch here,” and taking out his watch continued, “yes, it is high time; twelve thirty to the minute.”

The boy stepped forward involuntarily for a look at the queer, pretty thing in the man’s hand.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Why, that’s a watch, son. Didn’t you ever see one?” said the man kindly.

The guide smiled derisively: “Wal, I reckons not,” while the boy, too interested for reply, asked again:

“What’s a watch?” and the man with his genial laugh said:

“Son, we will be greatly pleased if you will take lunch with us. My name is Polk, Samuel Polk,” he said, touching his cap with the unfailing courtesy of a true gentleman. “And after we eat I will show you the watch and tell you all about it.”

But the mountaineer does not readily eat with “furriners,” so Steve stood near by and looked on while the two men ate very strange things. Little cans were opened and tiny fish taken out that looked exceedingly queer. Mr. Polk, trying to persuade the boy to eat, explained that these were sardines, some square, white things were crackers, a thick stuff was cheese and that some big, round, yellow things were oranges. But Steve only stared in silence till the meal was over though Tige, with no instinctive handicap, accepted delicious scraps with astonishment and relish.

The guide drawled out with a superior air: “Wal, sonny, you come from the backwoods shore ef you never heerd tell of a watch before.”

The boy looked squarely at him in sullen resentment a moment, but with such opportunity at hand he wouldn’t waste time with the likes of him. He asked, “What moves them things round?” and the man kindly opened the watch at the back and displayed all the cunning wheels which respond to the loosening spring, explained how it was wound each day to keep it from running down, and in answer to the boy’s eager questions as to how such things were made told him something of watch manufacture.

At last the wonderful hour was over and the two strange men prepared to leave.

“Good-bye, son,” said the man; “one of these days you will leave the mountains and go out into the big world to live a life of usefulness and honour, I hope.”

The words, so simple and commonplace to the man, were to the boy like a telescope lifted to the unknown heavens, but through which he could not yet look. He watched the men go down the mountainside, the strange words which he did not comprehend, but was never to forget, ringing in his ears. A bit of heavy timber hid them at last, and the boy stood dejected a moment, his heart swelling with an agony of strange longing, while the dog looked up at him almost pleading to understand. Then suddenly, with a cry of hope, Steve sprang after them, the dog following. Breathless he came upon them, and the man turned in surprise at the tragic voice and face. When the boy could speak he panted out:

“I’ve got the bes’ fox skin anywheres hereabout. I’ll swap it with you uns fer that watch thing.”

The man suppressed a smile and kindly replied:

“Why, lad, I couldn’t do without it for the rest of this hunting trip, but I tell you what I will do. When I get back to the city I’ll send you one.”

“Then ef yer’ll come home with me I’ll give ye the fox skin now,” the boy responded promptly.

“Oh, never mind about the fox skin now; I must get back to camp before dark and we are many miles away,” said the man.

“But I can’t take the watch ’thout you git the skin,” said the boy sturdily.

“Well, now, I’ll tell you,” said the man, realizing that he had struck the stubborn, independent pride of a mountaineer. “You give me your name, tell me where you live and I’ll send you the watch; then next time I’m over here I’ll get the skin.” The address was a difficult matter to determine, but the mountaineer helped them out.

This satisfied the boy and he saw the two strangers depart with better spirit, since he could look forward to the coming of the watch. He did not understand how it would ever reach him, but trusted the stranger implicitly. When the last sound of departing feet among the underbrush had died away, Steve turned and went home with long, rapid strides, the dog recognizing the relief and following with wagging tail.

“Huh, better let city folks alone; don’t have nothin’ to do with none of ’em.”

The boy, feeling the rebuke, then turned to his supper, but when his father had gone out to smoke, and Mirandy was in the lane looking for her sweetheart, Steve stole up to his mother’s side and stood digging his toe in the sand hearth.

“Mammy,” he said at last, “what makes that man diffrunt from we uns?”

The old woman smoked a moment in silence and then said:

“Wal, there’s a heap over the mountains what makes him diffrunt,––things we ain’ never seen ner heern tell on.” She smoked again a puff or two, then added, “I recken schoolin’s the most.”

“What’s schoolin’?” said the boy.

“Larnin’ things,” she replied.

“Do they larn to make watch things thar?” he asked.

His mother said she supposed so, “she knew they larned out o’ things they called books,” and then she explained as best she could to him what schools and books were. When his father came in again Steve said boldly:

“Pappy, I’m er goin’ over the mountains an’ larn how to make them watch things.”

The mountaineer stood as if paralyzed a moment, then his dull eyes blazed.

“No, you won’t nuther! Not a step will ye go! Ye shan’t nuver hev nothin’ to do with no city folks, so help me God!”

The boy dropped back cowed and trembling; he had never seen his father so stirred. He didn’t dare ask a question, but when the mountaineer had seated himself in the chimney corner opposite his wife, he continued:

“City folks with all their larnin’, fine clothes an’ fine ways ain’t to be depended on. I wouldn’t trus’ one of ’em with a jay bird lessen I wanted to git shed of it. Don’t you let me hear no mo’ o’ your goin’ over the mountains arter city folks.”

Steve soon climbed to his bed in a corner of the room with a very heavy heart. If city folks weren’t to be depended on then he would never get that watch, and all the beautiful visions of learning to do things in a wonderful new world grew dim and uncertain. So heavy was his heart as he fell asleep that when he waked at daylight, it was with a terrible sense of loss and grief. The morning meal over he wandered off with Tige, dull and dejected, till the unlucky rabbit had crossed his path and stirred strange, resentful enmity towards his little familiar contestants of the woods. Sending the dog angrily off he skinned the rabbit with savage jerks and then carried it at once back to his home, saying:

“Fry it, ’Randy, fry it dog-goned hard.”

“Come here, sonny.”

It was a rare term of endearment, and Steve got up quickly and went to her side.

“Don’t think too much o’ whut ye pappy said about city folks. He’s allus hated ’em fer some reason, I don’t know whut, ’less hit was ’cause I saw one when I was a gal afore we married, nuver min’ how ner where, and arter that I allus wanted to see whut was over the mountings. Ef ever ye git a chanct I want ye ter go thar an’ larn ter do things. I’d er done hit ef I’d er been a man. But don’t say nothin’ to ye pappy.”

This caution was unnecessary; and what a change the simple words made for Steve! His spirit bounded up into the world of visions again, and when dinner was on the table he refused to take a mouthful of the savoury rabbit, so ashamed was he of the manner of its killing.

“Howdye! Does airy feller named Stephen Langly live here?” said the stranger, reining in his tired, raw-boned steed without difficulty.

Mirandy went to the cabin door, stared a minute in surprise and then shook her head slowly. But Steve pushed past her saying:

“Yes, thar is, too. I’m Stephen Langly.”

“You! Sakes erlive, I clean forgot that was yo’ name!” and his sister laughed lazily, while the stranger joined in.

“Wal, you’re a powerful little chap to be a-gittin’ mail. But this here thing has yo’ name on it, they tole me at the store, an’ so I brung it along as I was a-comin’ this-a-way. Hit’s been thar mo’ than three months they tole me.”

Steve took the package, his hands trembling with eagerness and would have darted away to the woods with his treasure where he might look upon it first alone, but Mirandy stormed when he turned to go, and the man said:

“’Pears to me you mought show what ye got, when I brung it all this long ways to ye.”

That did seem the fair thing to do, so when they had asked the man to “light and hitch,” Steve sat down on the door-step and removed the wrappings from the square box; there was tissue paper first, a miracle of daintiness which the boy had never beheld before, and at last the watch came to view. Steve lifted it in trembling fingers, and while Mirandy and the man expressed their admiration his first quivering words were:

“That other one was yaller.”

“Wal, now,” said Mirandy, “that one was gold; you couldn’t expect that man to send you no gold.”

Mirandy, having a precious gilded trinket, was better posted on the colour and value of metals than Steve, though she made a slight error in her next statement.

“This hern is silver; that’s the next thing to gold,” and the bright nickel of the Waterbury twinkled in the spring sunshine as though trying to measure up to its admirers’ estimate.

“A silver watch,” said the stranger after he had heard the story of that autumn day with its promise of a watch which was just now fulfilled––“wal, you air a lucky boy, shore.”

Her eyes gleamed with strange, new fire as they fell upon the shining thing which belonged to another world from theirs, and when Steve had laboriously wound it, which he had not forgotten how to do, setting the wonderful machinery running, she whispered to him:

“Remember you air goin’ whar you kin larn to make things lack that.”

Steve’s shining eyes answered hers, though the boy failed to catch the light of prophecy and final benediction which they held. Hugging his treasure, with no hint of oncoming change he went out to feed the stranger’s horse while Mirandy prepared the dinner.

Steve’s watch never left his hand the long night through, and for the first time in his uneventful life he slept fitfully, waking every little while to make sure it was there.

Jim Langly was away for a few days “to a logrolling” several miles away and did not return until dusk of the evening after Steve’s watch came. The boy sat again by the firelight, watch in hand, when Jim walked in at the door. His eyes fell at once upon the strange, shining thing and his face was convulsed with sudden wrath:

“Let him hev it, Jim Langly, let him hev it,” and then she dropped back gray and still. Jim Langly had seen that gray stillness before, and he stood looking upon it now in dumb terror. His wife had been ailing a long time, it was true, yet no one had thought of death. But the grim visitor was there in all his quiet majesty. The weary spirit, which had for so many years longed for flight into new haunts of men, had winged its way at last to a far, mysterious country of which she had heard little, but towards which for months past she had been reaching out with a strange prescience of which no one guessed.

It was a dreary night at the cabin. No one tried to sleep. Jim Langly said no more to Steve about the watch, and the boy wore it in his bosom attached to a stout string about his neck, keeping it out of sight, and sobbing in the stillness of the woods as he wandered with Tige, “Mammy wanted me to have it.” And though his joy in it for the time was gone, there was peculiar comfort in this thought of her approval. The old dog looked up in the boy’s face from time to time pitifully, or stuck his nose in the lad’s hand, knowing well, in a way dogs have, what had happened.

Next day the wife and mother was laid to rest beside the row of little graves, and life completely changed for Steve. He went to bed as usual in his corner of the room, but he could not forget the still form which had lain in another corner the night before, and while Mirandy and his father slept heavily, he slipped from the bed, took a blanket and with Tige at his heels went into the woods again. Here in the stillness which he loved, worn out with loss of sleep and his first encounter with grief, nestling close to old Tige slumber came and held him until late the next day. His father and Mirandy paid little attention to what he did, so night after night he took his blanket and dog and slept in the woods, the two only going to the cabin for meals.

“Ye better quit sleepin’ out thar,” she said; “somethin’ ’ll eat ye up some night.”

“I ain’t a-feerd,” he said, and she thought no more about it.

Three days passed with a good accumulation of food, and as Steve and Tige lay down to sleep at night the boy said:

“O Tige, Tige, ye ain’t dead too?”

But death makes no reply. His lifelong playmate lay straightened out in that last unalterable, mysterious sleep.

The boy was too stunned for tears. He knelt beside his dog in silent misery. After a long while he rose from the ground and going to a moss-covered rock near by where laurel and forget-me-nots blossomed and rhododendron bells hung in clusters, with a stout stick and his sturdy hands he dug beneath the rock an opening large enough to hold his dead dog. Then he went back to where his old playmate lay, and lifting the stiffened body in his arms he stumbled blindly to the rock and laid it away.

Towards evening he slowly made his lonely way home.

Mirandy, missing the dog at last, inquired: “Whar’s Tige?” and Steve’s stiff lips articulated the one word, “Dead.”

She replied indifferently, “Wal, he want no ’count any mo’. I reckons hit’s a good thing.”

Steve had no answer and with swelling heart made his way to the woods to sleep alone. It was long before he could sleep, and as he lay in the unbearable loneliness, he decided that next morning he would start on that journey to the unknown. Perhaps to that new world sorrow would not follow! He would not need so much food now; he had enough saved already. The death of the dog urged him on to his purpose as nothing else could have done.

All the people he had known and those he expected to see beyond the mountains seemed to have sunk into some great unseen abyss. He could never find his way back to the old cabin, he knew, and he began to feel that he could never reach forward to the wonderful city of which he had dreamed. In the agony of loneliness and the chill of night which settled upon him he cried again, “O Tige, O Mammy!” Did the tender mother-arms reach down and draw her boy near to the heart of God? At any rate he grew quiet. He remembered vaguely that he had heard how God is everywhere, and with a new strange sense of companionship with the great Creator, which comes to souls in extremity, he fell asleep and did not waken until the sun, bursting forth with new brilliance after the day of rain, had lit up the mountain tops and set the birds to singing.

Suddenly, without premonition, his heart thrilled at faint sounds which seemed marvellously like those of a human voice. He stood still a moment in an agony of uncertainty, straining eye and ear for confirmation.

Yes, he was right! He caught the crackle of dry twigs and underbrush, while the faint human tones grew clear and distinct. Under the discipline of loneliness and distress the face of the untutored boy beamed with eager welcome which held no reserve and caught no suspicious glimmer of lurking treachery as near-by bushes parted and steps were close upon him.

Two men were before him, men very similar in appearance to those Steve had known, though with something in their faces which made him draw back even in the moment of joy at meeting others of his kind.

“Sakes erlive, Bub, whar’d ye come from?” called the taller, harder looking of the two.

“I come from Hollow Hut,” answered the boy with his simple dignity.

“And whar you goin’ to?” called the other man, while both laughed unpleasantly.

“Ter the city,” said the boy.

“Wal, now, that’s a pretty nice fox skin ye got rolled up thar,” said the tall one as they came closer. “S’pose you jes’ hand that over to us.”

“I can’t,” said the boy, holding it tighter in real alarm. “I swapped it with a man fer a watch, an’ I’m a-takin’ it ter him.”

And with that they pounced upon the terrified boy, jerked the fox skin from his clinging fingers and soon brought forth from its hiding-place in his bosom the beautiful, beautiful watch! Steve fought like a small tiger, but he was no match for them and stunned and bruised he soon lay upon the ground while the two men walked off, never once looking back at their helpless victim.

For a few minutes Steve could not think, so severe had been their cruel blows; then indignation, such as he had never known in his life, swept over him in a sudden flood. He sprang to his feet, ignoring pain and keenly watching which way they went, stealthily followed after. For two hours he kept within hearing of them, though being careful always that they did not get a glimpse of him. He did not know what he was going to do, but when they finally halted for the night he halted too. The men had also taken the last of his corn pone and bacon; there was nothing for him to eat, but he did not even think of it, so intently was he listening. Soon they began to sing and laugh very loudly and he knew then they had plenty of whiskey with them. Hope rose in his heart. After a bit they would fall into heavy sleep. He knew well the ways of drink.