"'Well, dad burn your looks, where'd you git all them marvles you been selling?'" 298 "Nucky's voice rang out sharp and clear ... 'Make for them spruce pines! Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!'" 304 MOTHERING ON PERILOUS I ARRIVAL ON PERILOUS JOSLIN, KY. _Last Thursday in July._ Here I am at the end of the railroad, waiting to begin my two-days' wagon-trip across the mountains. But the school wagon has not arrived,--my landlady says it is delayed by a "tide" in the creeks. By way of cheering me, she has just given a graphic account of the twenty-year-old feud for which this small town is notorious, and has even offered to take me around and show me, on walls, floors and court-house steps, the blood-spots where seven or eight of the feudists have perished. I declined to go,--it is sad enough to know such things exist, without seeing them face to face. Besides, I have enough that is depressing in my own thoughts. When I locked the doors of the old home day before yesterday, I felt as a ghost may when it wanders forth from the tomb. For a year I had not been off the place; it seemed I should never have the courage to go again. For I am one whom death has robbed of everything,--not only of my present but of my future. In the past seven years all has gone; and with Mother's passing a year ago, my very reason for existence went. And yet none knows better than I that this sitting down with sorrow is both dangerous and wrong; if there is any Lethe for such pain as mine, any way of filling in the lonely, dreaded years ahead of me, I must find it. It would be better if I had some spur of necessity to urge me on. As it is, I am all apathy. If there is anything that could interest me, it is some form of social service. A remarkable settlement work being done in the mountains of my own state recently came to my attention; and I wrote the head-workers and arranged for the visit on which I am now embarked. I scarcely dare to hope, however, that I shall find a field of usefulness,--nothing interests me any more, and also, I have no gifts, and have never been trained for anything. My dearest ambition was to make a home, and have a houseful of children; and this, alas, was not to be! _Night._ Howard Cleves, a big boy from the settlement school, has just arrived with the wagon--he says he had to "lay by" twenty-four hours on account of the "tide"--and we are to start at five in the morning. SETTLEMENT SCHOOL ON PERILOUS. _Sunday, In Bed._