There was a second door to one-half of it, also opening on the porch, and through the open door one could see a stove, a bed, a well-scrubbed table. As the man leading the red ox approached, a woman appeared in the mill door. She was a sturdy woman of middle life, her calico dress pulled up in front and girded around her ample waist with an apron string. Her sleeves were rolled to the elbows, and her fat, powerful hands rested on her hips. Her mouth was compressed, the muscles of her jaws protruded, her bright gray eyes rested on the strange man with a profound, unmoved scrutiny. When the ox stood beside the porch, the man spoke. “Good evening,” he said. The woman did not reply, she jerked her head; then she came slowly out, still looking at the man. “Jump off, David,” she said to the boy; then she took up the sack with ease, swung it into the hollow of her arm, and went with it into the mill, But over her shoulder she continued to regard the man standing in the road. She threw the sack down by the hopper, and came again into the mill door. Her fat hands returned to her hips and her eyes went again to the man. But she spoke to the boy. “You'll be late gittin' home.” “I ain't goin' home,” replied the child. “I'm goin' to Uncle Jimmie's,” and he pointed his linger up the valley. “You can make that by dark.” said the woman, “but you better be movin' along.” She came out and spread the piece of carpet on the ox. The small boy stepped off the mill porch and went out into the road behind the man, where a flat rock lay in the dust. He remained a moment squatted down on his bare legs. Then he returned, climbed onto the ox, and set out up the valley, kicking his heels against the patriarch's ancient ribs. At the bend of the road, the boy stopped and shouted. The man turned about where he was standing. The boy pointed his finger. “There's somethin' under that rock,” he called. Then he swung around on his piece of carpet, spoke to the ox, and was swallowed up in the shadows of the valley. The man stooped down and turned the fiat stone over. There lay the Barlow knife. The woman, watching the man, suddenly brought her bent palm to her forehead and looked up at the mountain, to see if some stray bit of the setting sun had entered the valley. But there was nothing. Night had descended. CHAPTER III |THE man stood out in the road looking toward the south. The country under his eye was primitive. The mountains rose in benches, heavily wooded. On one of these benches stood a log house to be seen among the trees, faintly, where the mountain road passed. Behind it, far away, a strip of green lay like a cloth across the very top of the mountain--a bit of farm in which two immense hickory trees stood like pillars. These trees must have been gigantic, since at the great distance they were to the eye huge. The man standing in the road seemed to be considering this country. His face was lifted and, in repose, melancholy.