of
exchange was still barter, and he found mountaineers drinking metheglin
still as well as moonshine. Moreover, there were still log-rollings,
house-warmings, corn-shuckings, and quilting parties, and sports were
the same as in pioneer days--wrestling, racing, jumping, and lifting
barrels. Often he saw a cradle of beegum, and old Judd had in his house
a fox-horn made of hickory bark which even June could blow. He ran
across old-world superstitions, too, and met one seventh son of a
seventh son who cured children of rash by blowing into their mouths. And
he got June to singing transatlantic songs, after old Judd said one day
that she knowed the "miserablest song he'd ever heerd"--meaning the most
sorrowful. And, thereupon, with quaint simplicity, June put her heels on
the rung of her chair, and with her elbows on her knees, and her chin
on both bent thumbs, sang him the oldest version of "Barbara Allen" in a
voice that startled Hale by its power and sweetness. She knew lots more
"song-ballets," she said shyly, and the old man had her sing some songs
that were rather rude, but were as innocent as hymns from her lips.

Everywhere he found unlimited hospitality.

"Take out, stranger," said one old fellow, when there was nothing on
the table but some bread and a few potatoes, "have a tater. Take two of
'em--take damn nigh ALL of 'em."

Moreover, their pride was morbid, and they were very religious. Indeed,
they used religion to cloak their deviltry, as honestly as it was ever
used in history. He had heard old Judd say once, when he was speaking of
the feud:

"Well, I've al'ays laid out my enemies. The Lord's been on my side an' I
gits a better Christian every year."

Always Hale took some children's book for June when he went to Lonesome
Cove, and she rarely failed to know it almost by heart when he went
again. She was so intelligent that he began to wonder if, in her case,
at least, another of the Hon. Sam's theories might not be true--that
the mountaineers were of the same class as the other westward-sweeping
emigrants of more than a century before, that they had simply lain
dormant in the hills and--a century counting for nothing in the matter
of inheritance--that their possibilities were little changed, and
that the children of that day would, if given the chance, wipe out the
handicap of a century in one generation and take their place abreast
with children of the outside world. The Tollivers were of good blood;