grow up like his father before him to a life of ceaseless
toil with no daylight or honour in it.... She almost hated the sight of
him, for he was the memorial of her failure.

The boy did not guess these thoughts. He pulled up a stool and sat very
close to the bed, holding his mother's frail wrist in a sunburnt hand so
big that it might have been that of a lad half-way through his teens.
He had learned in the woods to be neat and precise in his ways, and his
movements, for all his gawky look, were as soft as a panther's.

"Like me to tell you a story?" he asked. "What about Uncle Mord's tale
of Dan'l Boone at the Blue Licks Battle?"

There was no response, so he tried again.

"Or read a piece? It was the Bible last time, but the words is mighty
difficult. Besides you don't need it that much now. You're gettin'
better. ... Let's hear about the ol'Pilgrim."

He found a squat duodecimo in the trunk, and shifted the skin curtain
from one of the window holes to get light to read by. His mother lay
very still with her eyes shut, but he knew by her breathing that she
was not asleep. He ranged through the book, stopping to study the
crude pictures, and then started laboriously to read the adventures of
Christian and Hopeful after leaving Vanity Fair--the mine of Demas, the
plain called Ease, Castle Doubting, and the Delectable Mountains. He
boggled over some of the words, but on the whole he read well, and his
harsh voice dropped into a pleasant sing-song.

By and by he noticed that his mother was asleep. He took the tin
pannikin and filled it with fresh water from the spring. Then he kissed
the hand which lay on the blanket, looked about guiltily to see if
anyone had seen him, for kisses were rare in that household and tiptoes
out again.

The woman slept, but not wholly. The doorway, which was now filled with
the deeper gold of the westering sun, was still in her vision. It had
grown to a great square of light, and instead of being blocked in the
foreground by the forest it seemed to give on an infinite distance. She
had a sense not of looking out of a hut, but of looking from without
into a great chamber. Peace descended on her which she had never known
before in her feverish dreams, peace and a happy expectation.

She had not listened to Abe's reading, but some words of it had caught
her ear. The phrase "delectable mountains" for one. She did not know
what "delectable" meant, but it sounded good; and mountains, thoug