eading of his daughter, or because of his ingrained
dislike of any suggestions from outsiders, continued to send her to the
little neighborhood school. In so doing he was building better than he
knew; for humble as was the Cane Ridge school, there was in it an
atmosphere of happiness and refinement more real than could be found
amid the superficial culture, genteel primness and underlying
selfishness of most of the fashionable female seminaries of that day.
The young Virginian schoolmaster was teaching these boys and girls far
better things than could be found in any text-books--independence of
thought, reverence for learning, and love of purity and truth; and it
was lessons such as these that made these Bourbon County boys and girls
reverence their master and love their backwoods school.

CHAPTER V.

"SETTIN' TILL BEDTIME"

One night in November the Rogers household had gathered as usual around
the hearth in the spacious living-room. The fire roared and crackled
merrily, dancing on the whitewashed walls, and shining brightly on the
brass andirons and the glass doors of the cupboard.

The candle-stand stood in the center of the room; on one side of it sat
Abner Dudley, reading aloud from the "Kentucky Gazette"; on the other,
Mrs. Rogers, seated in the cushioned rocker, was patching a linsey
jacket for Tommy, who, with his youngest brother, was playing
jackstones on the floor behind the stand. To supplement the light from
candle and fire, a huge hickory knot had been thrust into the
fireplace, against one of the andirons. By its light Henry was weaving
a basket, the floor around him littered with the long, pliable osier
slips which the twins were sorting for his use. In the opposite corner,
on a low stool, the negro girl, Rache, nodded over a piece of knitting.
Mason Rogers, enjoying his after-supper pipe, was engaged in mending a
set of harness. Susan, dreamily staring into the fire, held her sewing
idly in her lap until her mother's voice aroused her.

"Come, Cissy, don't set thah with folded hands, ez though you wuz a
fine lady. Ef you can't see well 'nough to do the overcastin' on thet
jac'net petticoat, git out yer tettin' or them quilt squares. Rache,
you triflin' niggah, wake up. You don't airn yer salt. I declar' I'll
hev you sold down South the nex' time ole Jake Hopkins teks a drove to
Alabam'. I reckon you won't hev much time fur noddin' down in them
cottonfields, with the overseer's lash a-lippin