Melville Davisson Post

“ CHAPTER VII IN THE grove before the log schoolhouse, the Teacher was playing a game with the children. It was a game in which every child to the tiniest one could join. Two, standing opposite, with raised arms and the fingers linked, formed a sore of arch, through which the others passed in a circle, holding one another's hands. They all sang as they marched some verses of a mountain song, ending with the line, “An' catch the one that you love best.” ”

“ In the forest the wren and the catbirds fluttered as under a nesting instinct, the gray squirrels fled around the rough shellbark trees and from one tree top to another, far off a pheasant drummed, and farther off a mountain bull lowed as he wandered through the forest. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The old man turned back into the path before the School-teacher.
There was come now a certain dogged expression into his face.
“If you want to know,” he said, “there's been some complaint about you.”
“Who has complained of me?” said the School-teacher.
“Good men have complained.”
“What good men?”
“Why, men as good as the minister. Why, men as good as the doctor.”
Then he looked out sharp at the Schoolteacher.
“Ain't that hussy, Yaller Mag, up there with you at Nicholas Parks' house?” The School-teacher regarded the old man standing before him. ”

“ Midway between the garden and the house, opposite the door, was a whitewashed well curb. From a long pole, suspended in a forked tree on a round locust pin, hung a sapling fastened to a bucket. Everything about the little farm was well kept. The chimney and the palings were whitewashed, the fence was well laid up, the bit of land was clean. Midway in the meadow, a path entered through wooden bars and ran along inside the rail fence to the house.
There was a little crowd of some half dozen men standing about these bars, when the woman and child came up. ”

“ When Nicholas Parks died there had been, as now, a log on the fire, a cheese and a loaf of bread on the table.
There were, however, now on this table, before the School-teacher, some objects that had not been there. There was a little worn, broken toy that had once been a wooden horse; there was a top whittled out of a spool with a hickory pin through it. There was a Barlow knife with an iron handle, the blade broken at the point; there was a brass ring tied to a cotton rib-hon; and there were little bunches of wild flowers, the stems of which were primly wrapped with black thread. ”

“ The child had only a few words, the dog had none. How could the man know so well, what they meant? It was a wonder that she turned about, and at last, out of the deeps of her own feelings, she got an answer that she held to.
“If you love a thing enough, it's goin' to understand you.”
The relation of the School-teacher to this tiniest child was also that of his relation to every other one. The sense of it spread throughout the school. This school became a family. What the cheerless home withheld, it gave. No child could have told one what that was. ”

“ CHAPTER X THE children had bought the School-teacher a hat. It had been a large undertaking, and the cause of innumerable secret conferences in the grove behind the schoolhouse. The purchase of so costly a thing as a hat required a certain sum of money. To raise this sum of money, the children had been put to the most desperate straits. Every tiny store that any child possessed had been brought forward and contributed to the common fund. ”

“ You must take to little children.”
“I love little children,” replied the School-teacher.
The child put his hand into the pocket of his apron and drew out a battered toy—a cheap, little, painted, wooden toy, so broken and worn that no one could tell what animal it was originally intended to represent. ”

“ The dog ran barking after the man and little boy. He overtook them and went on ahead. At the point where the path entered the forest, the man turned and looked back at the woman. She did not move, but the smile, struggling all the morning to conquer her face, finally possessed it.
The School-teacher, the little boy and the dog continued to descend the mountain. The child addressed every object with which he was familiar. When they passed the brindle cow, cropping broom sedge beside the path, he hailed it with a salutation.. ”

“ On the puncheon floor was a piece of handmade carpet—a circular mat, hand-plaited out of rags, a primitive cradle with wooden rockers, a bed covered with a pieced quilt, a rough stone fireplace, an iron pot with a lid and a black iron kettle. On the porch stood a split-basket full of beans in the hull, and beside the basket two chairs, the seats of plaited hickory bark. One of them was very small, a chair in miniature, made for the little boy. Near the path was an ax, a hacked log and some lighter limbs of trees, such as a woman might carry in from the forest. ”

“ And at daybreak they laid the body in a grave which they had made between the two great hickories on the ridge beyond Nicholas Parks' house. They lined the grave with bright-colored leaves, and wrapped the body in that piece of linen which the School-teacher had bade the miller keep for him until he should need it. The hands of women and children filled the grave with earth. Then they went away down the mountain, toward the mill, leaving a woman crouched beside the grave. Her apron covering her yellow hail. Her body rocking. ”

“ The sheriff could send his deputy, who served legal papers in the county, but the deputy had never seen the School-teacher and did not know him. And, besides this, if the School-teacher resisted, and those about him should come to his support, there might be considerable trouble to take him. One man conducting a prisoner through the mountains in the night might easily be compelled to release him. Moreover, the deputy, knowing the danger of making an arrest in the mountain districts, could not be got to go up alone. ”

“ At this season the only natural product of the mountain that could be exchanged for money was hickory nuts, and the value of this product was in doubt. Sometimes, early in certain seasons, the storekeeper had been known to give twenty-five cents for a bushel of choice hickory nuts, not the gross shellbark nut, but the small, round, sweet-kerneled nut of the smooth-bark hickory. ”

“ An' Lord-a'-mighty! I thought I'd die. I went down off the porch. An' I reckon I was crazy, because I started out, an' I run just as hard as I could right up the road. I reckon I run for half a mile. Then I thought I heard the School-teacher callin' me. An' I come hack with my apron over my head a-cryin'. An' when I got right here in the road, I did hear him, an' he said, 'Don't be distressed, for the child's all right.' An' I took my apron off my head, an' I looked in the door, an' there set the School-teacher by the stove with the little boy wrapped in a blanket—an' he was alive. ”

“ As the School-teacher had continued to remain on Nicholas Parks' lands after the restraining order had been posted on the door, the sheriff could apply to the circuit judge for a rule and cause him to be brought before the court and imprisoned for contempt. The second plan was for the doctor to go before a justice of the peace and take out a warrant against the School-teacher charging him with practicing medicine without a license. ”

“ He held it up for the Schoolteacher's admiration.
“Gup,” he said.
“He means a horse,” the woman explained. “He's heard folks down to the mill say 'git up' to horses they was ridin', an' he thinks that's the name of it, but he's got names of his own. Now he calls a bird an' a fish an' a mouse a 'giggle.' I don't know why. Because a bird ain't like a fish, an' neither one of them ain't like a mouse.”
“I believe I understand why he gives them all the same name,” replied the School-teacher.
The woman came closer to the man and the child. ”

“ A man was coming through the forest along this abandoned path. He walked slowly, his hands behind him, his head bare. He was a very young man—at that period of life when, within a day, as by the crossing of some unmarked line, the boy becomes a man. ”

“ The minister spoke for the others. He was little accustomed to the diplomacy of the advocate and he thinly disguised the threat that was the tenor of this speech. He said that one in the position of a circuit judge ought to sustain the better elements of the community in their efforts to get rid of an undesirable person; that the will of the people was not lightly to be disregarded; that the object of making offices elective was that one who refused to consider what the people desired might be replaced by another ”

“ He went across the road, picked up a box, knocked the dust out of it and brought it over by the mill porch. Then he took the bit out of the horse's mouth, and put the bridle rein over the saddle, under the stirrup leather.
“Ole Nicholas dead!” the woman repeated. “Well! Upon my word!”
“Why shouldn't he be dead?” said the doctor. “Every damn thing's got to die.” ”

“ He pulled up on the roadside, got out, tied his horse to a fence rail with one of the lines, took out his handbag, and came over to the little group waiting by the bars.
“Good evening, brethren,” he said. “The doctor told me that Nicholas Parks had been called to his account, so I came up to give him Christian burial.”
“He died sudden, I guess,” replied one of the men.
“It's God's way,” said the preacher. “The sinner is taken in the twinkling of an eye.” ”

“ The woman was busy at the stove.
“I don't see why a cow can't learn somethin', can't learn to come home at night, anyway. Everything else learns to come home at night. Ketch a dog forgittin' it. I 'spose old Bloss has gone as fur as she could git, an' you can't allears hear the bell. But Martha'll find her.”
The woman came from the stove to the table.
“Martha can read, an' she can spell out of the spellin' book. She's real smart.”
A stone jar sat on a bench in the corner of the room, beside it was a yellow gourd with a long handle, the bowl of the gourd cut out to form a dipper. ”

“ Little David went up to see, but he ain't come back.”
“I didn't know the new School-teacher had come.”
“He got here last night,” said the miller.
“What kind of a man is he?”
“He's a man that the children will like,” replied the woman.
“Children,” said the preacher, “are not competent judges of men. Let us go up to the house. Is he elderly?” ”

“ The School-teacher spoke to the woman.
“What has happened?” he said.
“My man's got hurt.”
“How was he hurt?”
“He was choppin' in his clearin', an' his ax ketched in a grapevine, an' throwed him. I reckon his shoulder's all broke. He can't use his arm none.”
The School-teacher addressed the man. “How does your arm feel?” ”

“ Then he came abruptly on a path that entered a little cove and continued around a shoulder of the mountain. A spring of water issuing here from a limestone strata trickled into a keg buried in the earth. On the broken branch of a dogwood sapling, beside the spring, hung a mottled gourd.
The School-teacher stopped, dipped the gourd into the crystal water, and drank.
At this moment three figures came into view along the path from the opposite direction: a child about two years old, a woman, and a rough-haired yellow dog. ”

“ The memorandum book was one of those cheap advertisements of patent medicine which are given away at the country store. It contained a few pages blank on one side and printed with virtues of the medicine on the other. The pencil was a little more pretentious than the ordinary one. It consisted of a tin case containing a long, thin core of purple lead, the end of which could be made to protrude for writing by pressing the thumb on the opposite end of the case.
The old man turned the leaves of the memorandum book, wetting his forefinger in his mouth, until he found a blank page. ”

“ Old Nicholas Parks died without heirs, and, by the law, his property escheats to the state. So you can make up your mind to get off.”
He reached over, caught the whip out of its socket, and struck the horses. They jumped and the buckboard went clattering down the mountain, the wheels bouncing on the stones.
The little boy raised his hand and pointed his tiny finger at the departing horses.
“Man hurt gups,” he said.
The School-teacher stood in the road watching the humpback lash the half-starved team. His face was full of misery. ”

“ CHAPTER XVII THE several persons who had forced the judge to commit the School-teacher to the county jail, having gone down from the courthouse, remained throughout the day in conference. It was evident that the circuit judge had acted against his own inclination, and that he could not be depended upon to hold the prisoner in custody. Some other method for ridding the community of this undesirable person must be found. ”

“ He said that if the justice of the peace has issued a warrant antedating the rule, he would yield to him the custody of the prisoner.
They took the School-teacher out of the courthouse and across the village street to the office of the justice of the peace.
The justice was greatly pleased when the deputy and Jonas came in with the prisoner. A good many stories had drifted down from the mountains to him concerning the miraculous cures which this man had effected, and he was anxious to see him. ”