He crossed the little brook that ran on a bed of brown stone behind the cabin, and leaned against the rail-fence which surrounded the pine-pole corn-crib. He could easily leave them in their squalor and ignorance and return to the great, intellectual world—the world which read his editorials and followed his precepts, the key-note of which had always been the love of man for man as the greatest force in the universe—but, after all, would that not stamp him with the brand he most despised—hypocrisy? A pretty preacher, he, of such fine-spun theories, while his own mother and her step-children were burrowing in the soil like eyeless animals, and he living on the fat of the land along with the wealth and power of the country! The cabin door shone out, a square of red light against the blackness of the hill and the silent, serried pines beyond. He heard Jake whistling a tune he had whistled long ago, when they had worked Mark Bruce’s crop side by side, and the spasmodic creaking of the puncheons as the family moved about within. A figure appeared in the doorway. It was his mother, and she was coming to search for him. "Here I am, mother!" he cried out, gently, as she advanced through the darkness; "look out and don’t get your feet wet." She chuckled childishly as she stepped across the brook on the largest stones. When she reached him she put her hand on his arm and laughed: "La me, boy, a little wet won’t hurt me—I’m used to a good soakin’ mighty nigh every drenchin’ rain. I slept with a stream of it tricklin’ through the roof on my back one night, an’ I’ve milched the cows in that thar lot when the mire was shoe-mouth deep in January. I ’lowed I’d find you out here. You used to be a mighty hand to sneak off to yoreself to study, and you are still that away. But you are different in some things, too. You don’t talk our way exactly, an’ I reckon that’s what aggravates Mark. He was goin’ on jest now about yore stuck-up way o’ eatin with yore pocket-handkerchief spread out in yore lap." King looked past her at the full moon rising above the trees on the mountain-top. "Mother," said he, abruptly, and he put his arm impulsively around her neck, and his eyes filled—"mother, I can’t stay here but a few days. I have work to do in Atlanta. Your health is bad, and you are not comfortable; the others are strong and can stand it, but you can’t. Come down there with me for a while, anyway. I’ll put you under a doctor and bring back your health."