“What do ye mean, man?” said she looking at him curiously, but refusing the money which he offered. “Ye seem like a quare feller to me. Air ye outen yore haid?” “Maybe I got some good sense knocked into my haid, I don’t know. All I know is I’m a-goin’ Outside.” “Outside?” The voice of the old woman was low. “I’ve got some girls—Outside, somewhar. Ye mustn’t say they wasn’t my children, for they was. They nuvver only had no chancet.” “I know that,” said David Joslin. “That’s why I’m a-goin’ out. I’m a-goin’ to try some time, somehow, to make a school, er a church, er something, in these hills. We’ve got to learn how to read an’ write. I’ve got a callin’ that that’s what we’d orter do. I never seen ye before—maybe I never will again—but listen now. Some time, if I ever build a school, I’m a-goin’ to build another one right in here.” His eyes were streaming tears. “I’ll tell ye the place,” said she eagerly. “Down below, about hafe a mile, thar’s a place whar two stones come together—great big ones. Thar’s a level floor under that, wider’n the floor of this here place, an’ it’s covered in from the rain. Thar’s leaves thar—ye could fetch in pine needles a-plenty if ye wanted to, fer thar’s pine about. Rain or shine ye could hold school down thar. Hit would be sich a purty place.” “Good luck, stranger,” said she. “Ye may be crazy—I reckon ye air—but God knows thar orter be more crazy people like that in these hills.” Her guest turned and followed on down the winding stream in the muddy pathway. A quarter or a half-mile below, he paused and looked across the vine-covered remnant of what once had been a rail fence. He had heard a rustling in the corn, and saw now the figure of a young woman who stood looking at him; at her side, clinging to her tattered skirt, a young child, perhaps four or five years old. This child had in her little apron a store of nuts, gathered in the wood beyond. Her mother carried half an armful of ears of corn. “Howdy,” called David Joslin across the fence, in customary salutation of the hills. “Howdy,” she replied, but still stood motionless. “Won’t ye come up a little closeter?” he resumed. “Yore mammy up yander——” The young woman slowly advanced, the child clinging still to her skirt. She was a wild-looking creature, but quite comely, with a sort of Indian cast to her features, her skin dark, whether with sun or with other blood none might tell. Her eyes were black as night, and her figure lean and slender, not quite so angular as that of the average mountain woman. Young enough she was, and goodly enough she might have been if ever she “had had her chance.” The child at her skirt, an elfin youngster, had much of her mother’s darkness of hair and eyes, her mother’s wide mouth of white, even teeth, a thing unusual thereabouts. She now stood staring straight at the stranger, motionless and silent.