"Tom Tit does, but I have to go away for a time every fall and winter and Tom Tit keeps house for me while I am gone. He is a famous housekeeper." "Do you get lonesome all by yourself?" asked Lucy. "We uns ain't never alone. There's the baby fox and the cow and the chickens, and every day we uns tries to find something and then we uns has to write it down for the spring-keeper 'ginst he comes home. Every day we uns has to go to the post office for the letter, too, and that takes time. The days in winter are so short." "Oh, do you get a letter every day? How jolly! My mother doesn't write to me but once a week," said Lil, "--although of course she 'phones me in the meantime and sends me candy and things." "We uns never does git letters from maw," and poor Tom Tit's eyes clouded sadly. "Ever since the men came and found her and hid her in that hole she ain't writ a line to poor Tom Tit." "But you write to her every time you write to me, don't you, Tom Tit?" and the old gentleman put a calming and kindly hand on the shoulder of the trembling youth. It seemed that at every mention of mothers the thought of his own mother came back to him and the agony he went through with at the time of her death seized hold of him. The young people learned later from their host, while Tom Tit was washing the supper dishes, all about the poor boy's history. "Tom Tit's mother was a very fine woman of an intelligence and character that was remarkable even in these mountains where intelligence and character are the rule rather than the exception. She had no education, but the things she could accomplish without education were enough to make the ones who have been educated blush to think how little they do with it. She had evolved a philosophy of her own of such goodness and serenity that to know her and talk with her was a privilege. She seemed to me to be like these mountains, where she was born and where she died. She had had trouble enough to break the spirit of any ordinary mortal, but she said her spirit was eternal and could not be broken.