“Oh, mother, mother!” he called to her, as if he were a great way off. “Guess what!” He did not wait for her to guess. “The Good Old Man is goin' to leave Leatherwood and go Over the Mountains with the Little Flock, and he says he's goin' to bring down the New Jerusalem at Philadelphy, and all that wants to go up with him kin go. Mr. Hingston's goin' with him, and he's goin' to let Benny. Benny don't know whether he can get to go up in the New Jerusalem or not, but he's goin' to coax his father the hardest kind.” He stopped panting at his mother's knees where she sat on the cabin threshold nearly as high as he stood. She put up her hand and pushed the wet hair from his forehead. “How you _do_ sweat, Joey! Go round and wash your face at the bench. Maybe Jane will give you a drink of the milk, while it's warm yet, before she lets it down in the well. She's just through milkin'.” The boy tore himself away with a shout of “Oh, goody!” and his mother heard him at the well. “Wait a minute, Jane! Mother said I could have a drink before you let it down,” and then she heard him, between gulps, recounting to the girl's silence the rumors she had already heard from him. He came running back, with a white circle of milk round his lips. “Mother,” he began, “have you ever been Over-the-Mountains?” “No, I've never been anywhere but just here in the country, and where you was born, back where we moved from.” “Well, mother, how old am I now?” “You're goin' on twelve, Joey dear.” “Yes, that's what I thought. Benny ain't on'y ten. And he ain't as big for his age as what I am. He's been to the circus, though; his father took him to it at Wheeling that time when he went on the steamboat. I wisht I could go to a circus.” “Well, maybe you kin when you grow up. Circuses ain't everything.” “No,” the boy relucted. “Benny says the New Jerusalem will be a good deal like the circus. That's the reason he coaxed his father to let him go. Is Philadelphy as far as Wheeling?” “A good deal further, from what I've heard tell,” his mother said; she smiled at his innocently sinuous approach to his desire. He broke out with it. “Mother, what's the reason I can't go with Benny, and Mr. Hingston, and the Little Flock? They'd take good care of me, and I wouldn't make Mr. Hingston any trouble. Me 'n' Benny could sleep together. And the Good Old Man he's always been very pleasant to me. Patted my head oncet, and ast me what my name was.” “Did you tell him it was Billings?” his mother asked uneasily. “No, just Joseph; and he said, well, that was his name, too. Don't you think the Good Old Man is good?” “We're none of us as good as we ought to be, Joey. No, he ain't a good man, I'm afraid.” “My!” the boy said, and then after a moment: “I don't want to go, Mother, unless you want to let me go.”