arning as the sadly deficient district
schools could conduct him; those shambling wayside institutions where,
on puncheon benches, the children memorize in that droning chorus from
which comes the local name of "blab-school."

Turner had even taken his certificate and taught for a term in one of
these pathetic places. He laughed as he confessed this: "Hit jest
proves how pore ther schools air, hyarabouts," he avowed.

"I expect you'd have liked to go to college," inquired Henderson, and
the boy's eyes blazed passionately with his thwarted lust for
opportunity--then dimmed to wretchedness.

"Like hit! Hell, Mr. Henderson, I'd lay my left hand down, without
begrudgin' hit, an' cut hit off at ther wrist fer ther chanst ter do
thet!"

Henderson sketched for him briefly the histories of schools that had
come to other sections of the hills; schools taught by inspired
teachers, with their model farms, their saw-mills and even their
hospitals: schools to which not only children but pupils whose hair had
turned white came and eagerly learned their alphabets, and as much more
as they sought.

The boy raised a hand. "Fer God's sake don't narrate them things," he
implored. "They sots me on fire. My grandsires hev been satisfied hyar
fer centuries an' all my folks sees in me, fer dreamin' erbout things
like thet, is lackin' of loyalty."

Henderson found his interest so powerfully engaged that he talked on
with an excess of enthusiasm.

"But back of those grandsires were other grandsires, Turner. They were
the strongest, the best and the most American of all America; those
earlier ancestors of yours and mine. They dared to face the wilderness,
and those that got across the mountains won the West."

"Ours didn't git acrost though," countered the boy dryly. "Ours was
them thet started out ter do big things an' failed."

Henderson smiled. "A mule that went lame, a failure to strike one of
the few possible passes, made all the difference between success and
failure in that pilgrimage, but the blood of those empire-builders is
our blood and what they are now, we shall be when we catch up. We've
been marking time while they were marching, that's all."

"Ye've done been off ter college yoreself, hain't ye, Mr. Henderson?"

"Yes. Harvard."

"Harvard? Seems ter me I've heered tell of hit. Air hit as good as
Berea?"

The visitor repressed his smile, but before he could answer Bear Cat
pressed on:

"Whilst ye're up hyar, I wo