* * * * * *

For ten long days more Mrs. Tip Pulsifer chopped her own wood, Cevery
went undandled, and Earl and Pearl and Alice Eliza carried the water
that half mile from the spring. For nine long days more John
Shadrack's widow entertained the two strangers who had sought a refuge
in Happy Valley, and found it. Rare pleasure did John Shadrack's widow
have from our visit. There seemed no way she could repay us. It did
her old heart good to have someone to whom she could recount the
manifold virtues of her John--and a wonderful man John was, I judge.
Had I not come, she might have lost the Heaven-given gift of powwowing,
for there is no sickness in Happy Valley--the people die without it.
It was a pleasure to have Mark settin' around the kitchen; it was
elevatin' to hear Tip tell of his home and his wife and children; and
as for cooking, it was no pleasure to cook for just one.

"You must come agin," she cried, on the morning of that ninth day, as
she stood in the doorway of her little log-house and waved her apron at
us. "It's been a treat to have you."

So we went away, Tip and I, with Harmon Shadrack's mule and the
battered buggy. Our backs were turned to the Sunset Land. Our faces
were toward the East and the red glow of the early morning. When we
saw Thunder Knob again, Happy Valley was far below us, and only the
thin spire of smoke drifting through the pines marked the Shadrack
clearing. I kissed my hand in farewell salute to it. Perhaps John's
widow saw me--she sees so much in her dreams.

"There's no place like Black Log," said Tip, as we turned the crest of
Thunder Knob. "Mind how pretty it is--mind the shadders on the ridge
yon--and them white barns. Mind the big creek--there by the kivered
bridge--ain't it gleamin' cheerful? There's no place like our walley."

XIX

It was dark when I reached home. Opening the door, I groped my way
across the room till I found the lamp and lighted it. Then I sat down
a minute to think. Two weeks is a very short time, but when you have
been over the mountains and back, when you have hovered for days close
to the banks of the Styx, when you have huddled for days close to the
Shadrack stove, listening to the widow's stories of her John and Tip's
praise of his wife, then a fortnight seems an age. But everything was
as I had left it. Even the pen leaned against the inkwell and the
scraps of paper littered the floor where I had