Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
By John Fox, Jr.
Author of "The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come," "The Trail of the
Lonesome Pine," Etc.
With Four Illustrations By F. C. YOHN
June 28, 1912.
Twin spirals of blue smoke rose on either side of the spur, crepttendril-like up two dark ravines, and clearing the feathery greencrests of the trees, drifted lazily on upward until, high above, theymelted shyly together and into the haze that veiled the drowsy face ofthe mountain.
Each rose from a little log cabin clinging to the side of a littlehollow at the head of a little creek. About each cabin was a ricketyfence, a patch of garden, and a little cleared hill-side, rocky, fullof stumps, and crazily traced with thin green spears of corn. On onehill-side a man was at work with a hoe, and on the other, over thespur, a boy—both barefooted, and both in patched jean trousers upheldby a single suspender that made a wet line over a sweaty cotton shirt:the man, tall, lean, swarthy, grim; the boy grim and dark, too, andwith a face that was prematurely aged. At the man's cabin a little girlin purple homespun was hurrying in and out the back door clearing upafter the noonday meal; at the boy's, a comely woman with masses ofblack hair sat in the porch with her hands folded, and lifting her eyesnow and then to the top of the spur. Of a sudden the man impatientlythrew down his hoe, but through the battered straw hat that bobbed upand down on the boy's head, one lock tossed on like a jetblack plumeuntil he reached the end of his straggling row of corn. There hestraightened up and brushed his earth-stained fingers across a dullredsplotch on one cheek of his sullen set face. His heavy lashes liftedand he looked long at the woman on the porch—looked without anger nowand with a new decision in his steady eyes. He was getting a little toobig to be struck by a woman, even if she were his own mother, andnothing like that must happen again.
A woodpecker was impudently tapping the top of a dead burnt tree nearby, and the boy started to reach for a stone, but turned instead andwent doggedly to work on the next row, which took him to the lowercorner of the garden fence, where the ground was black and rich. There,as he sank his hoe with the last stroke around the last hill of corn, afat fishing-worm wriggled under his very eyes, and the growing manlapsed swiftly into the boy again. He gave another quick dig, the earthgave up two more squirming treasures, and with a joyful gasp he stoodstraight again—his eyes roving as though to search all creation forhelp against the temptation that now was his. His mother had her faceuplifted toward the top of the spur; and following her gaze, he saw atall mountaineer slouching down the path. Quickly he crouched behindthe fence, and the aged look came back into his face. He did notapprove of that man coming over there so often, kinsman though he was,and through the palings he saw his mother's face drop quickly and herhands moving uneasily in her lap. And when the mountaineer sat down onthe porch and took of