them!"

Then I told her that I must keep Perry Thomas's oration going to the
end, and she leaned toward me, her hands clasped, her eyes fixed on
mine and asked: "But will you?"

"I can make no promises," I answered. "They say our bodies change
entirely every seven years. Mark Hope, age fifty, will be a different
man from Mark Hope, age twenty-three. He may have nothing to boast
about himself, and his distorted mind may magnify the deeds of the
younger man. Now the younger man refuses to commit himself. He will
not be in any way responsible for his successors."

"How wise you are!" she cried.

"Wise?" I exclaimed, searching her face for a sign of mockery. But
there was none.

"I mean you talk so differently from the others in the valley. Either
they talk of crops or weather, or they sit in silence and just look
wise. I suppose you have travelled?"

"As compared to most folks in Black Log I am a regular Gulliver," I
answered. "My father was a much-travelled man. He was an Englishman
and came to the valley by chance and settled here, and to his dying day
he was a puzzle to the people. That an Englishman should come to Six
Stars was a phenomenon. That Isaac Bolum and Henry Holmes should be
born here was no mere chance--it was a law of nature."

"And this English father?"

"He married, and then Tim and I came to Black Log."

"Like Isaac Bolum and Henry Holmes?"

"Exactly; and we should have grown like them, but our father was a
bookish man, and with him we travelled; we went with Dickens and
Thackeray and those fellows, and as we came to different places in the
books, he told us all about them. He'd seen them all, so we got to
know his country pretty well. Once he took us to Harrisburg, and by
multiplying everything we saw there, Tim and I were able to picture all
the great cities of the world--for instance, London is five hundred
times Harrisburg."

"But why didn't you go to see the places yourself?"

"Why doesn't everybody in Black Log go to Florida in winter or take the
waters at Carlsbad? We did plan a great trip--father and mother and
Tim and I--we were going to England together when the farm showed a
surplus. We never saw that surplus. I went to Philadelphia once.
It's a grand place, but I had just enough of money to keep me there two
days and bring me home. Then the war came. And now Tim thinks I've
been around the world. He's jealous, for he has never been past
Harrisburg; but I've