Black Log--what was
left of me.

My people were very kind. They sent Henry Holmes's double phaeton to
the county town to meet my train, and as I stumbled from the car, being
new to my crutches, I fell into the arms of a reception committee. Tim
was there. And my little brother fought the others off and picked me
up and carried me, as I had carried him in the old days when he was a
toddling youngster and I a sturdy boy. But he was six feet two now and
I had wasted to a shadow. Perry Thomas had a speech prepared. He is
our orator, our prize debater, our township statesman, and his
frock-coat tightly buttoned across his chest, his unusually high and
stiffly starched collar, his repeated coughing as he hovered on the
outskirts of the crowd, told me plainly that he had an address to make.
Henry Holmes, indeed, asked me to stand still just one minute, and I
divined instantly that he was working in the interest of oratory; but
Tim spoiled it all by running off with me and tossing me into the
phaeton.

So in the state-coach of Black Log, drawn by Isaac Bolum's
lemon-colored mules, with the committee rattling along behind in a
spring wagon, politely taking our dust, I came home once more, over the
mountains, into the valley.

Sometimes I wonder if I shall ever make another journey as long as that
one. Sometimes I have ventured as far as the gap, and peeped into the
broad open country, and caught the rumble of the trains down by the
river. There is one of the world's highways, but the toll is great,
and a crippled soldier with a scanty pension and a pittance from his
school is wiser to keep to the ways he knows.

And how I know the ways of the valley! That day when we rode into it
every tree seemed to be waving its green arms in salute. As we swung
through the gap, around the bend at the saw-mill and into the open
country, checkered brown and yellow by fields new-ploughed and fields
of stubble, a flock of killdeer arose on the air and screamed a
welcome. In their greeting there seemed a taunting note as though they
knew they had no more to fear from me and could be generous. I saw
every crook in the fence, every rut in the road, every bush and tree
long before we came to it. But six months had I been away, yet in that
time I had lived half my life, and now I was so changed that it seemed
strange to find the valley as fat and full as ever, stretched out there
in the sunshine in a quiet, smiling slumber.

"Thin