Produced by Al Haines. [Illustration: Cover art] [Illustration: I WAS NEVER SO HAPPY (Page 80)] JACK BALLINGTON FORESTER BY JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE AUTHOR OF "OLD MISTIS;" "A SUMMER HYMNAL;" "THE BISHOP OF COTTONTOWN;" "UNCLE WASH," ETC. ILLUSTRATIONS BY GEORGE GIBBS THOMAS LANGTON TORONTO, CANADA. Copyright, 1911, by THE JOHN C. WINSTON Co. TO THE TWINS HELEN AND MARY DANIEL MOORE *CONTENTS* *I* *THE HEIR OF THE BLUEGRASS* CHAPTER I Soul Dreams and the Soil II Little Sister *II* *"A TWILIGHT PIECE"* I The Flame in the Wood II The Home-Stretch III The Hickories IV Colonel Goff V Pedigrees and Principles VI The Make-Believe VII The Chimes of the Wisteria VIII The Stone-Crop IX The Transplanted Pine X Conquering Satan XI Two Ways of Love XII Work and Mine Acre XIII The Unattainable XIV God and a Butterfly XV Hickories and Old Hickory XVI Heart’s Ease XVII "Lady Carfax" XVIII The Last Dance XIX The High Jump *III* *THE HICKORY’S SON* I "Love is not Love That Alters" II A Dream and Its Ending III The Awakening IV The Call of the Drum V The First Tennessee VI The Battle in the Bacaue Mountains VII The Juramentados *IV* *THE BURGEONING* I Two of a Kind II How Aunt Lucretia Ran Away III A Night with Captain Skipper IV My First Automobile V The Sick Tree *ILLUSTRATIONS* I Was Never So Happy . . . . . . _Frontispiece_ "Stop Her—He’ll Kill Her," I Cried "Love is not Love that Alters." I was on Him, My Knee on His Breast *FOREWORD* _I am the child of the Centuries. I am the son of the Æons which were. I have always been, and I shall always be. To make me it has taken fire, star-dust, and the Spirit of God—the lives of billions of people, and the lights of a million suns._ _I have grown from sun and star-dust to the Thing-Which-Thinks._ _It were the basest ingratitude if I were not both thankful to God and proud of my pedigree._ _What has come to me has been good; what shall come will be better: for I am Evolution, and I grow ever to greater things. Life has been good; death will be better; for it is the cause of all my past, making for a still greater future._