edge was not great; but it was all freely at their
service. His heart swelled with good-will as he prepared to open his
modest campaign of usefulness.

To come into leadership naturally a man should be the logical outgrowth
of his class and time, and this Creed knew he was not. Yet he had
pondered the matter deeply, and put it thus to himself: The peasant of
Europe can only rise through stages of material prosperity to a point of
development at which he craves intellectual attainment, or spiritual
growth. But the mountaineer is always a thinker; he has even in his
poverty a hearty contempt for luxury, for material gain at the expense of
personality. With his disposition to philosophy, fostered by solitude and
isolation, he readily overleaps those gradations, and would step at once
from obscurity to the position of a man of culture were the means at
hand.

"Bonbright," remonstrated Jephthah Turrentine, in the first conversation
the two held upon the subject, "Ye cain't give people what they ain't
ready to take. Ef our folks wanted law and order, don't you reckon they'd
make the move to get it?"

"That's it exactly, Mr. Turrentine," responded Creed quickly. "They need
to be taught what to want."

"Oh, they do, do they?" inquired Jephthah with a humorous twitch of the
lips. "Well, ef you're a-goin' to set up to teach, hadn't you better have
a school-house, place of a jestice's office?"

"Maybe you're right. I reckon you are--exactly right," Creed assented
thoughtfully. "I'd studied about that considerable. I reckon I'm a more
suitable age for a schoolmaster than for a justice; and the children--but
that would take a long time; and I wanted to give the help where it was
worst needed."

"Oh, well, 'tain't a hangin' matter," old Jephthah smiled at the younger
man's solemn earnestness. "Ef this new fangled buildin' o' yours don't
get used for a jestice's office we can turn it into a school-house; we
need one powerful bad."

The desultory, sardonic, deep-voiced, soft-footed, mountain carpenters
who worked leisurely and fitfully with Creed were always mightily amused
by the exactness of the "town feller's" ideas.

"Why lordy! Lookee hyer Creed," remonstrated Doss Provine, over a
question of matching boards and battening joints, "ef you git yo' pen so
almighty tight as that you won't git no fresh air. Man's bound to have
ventilation. Course you can leave the do' open all the time like we-all
do; but when yo're a-holdin'