iversity, to the halls of the chapel
of melody. As I lingered there in the joy and pain of meeting old school
friends, there swept over me a sudden longing to pass again beyond the
blue hill, and to see the homes and the school of other days, and to
learn how life had gone with my school-children; and I went.

Josie was dead, and the gray-haired mother said simply, "We've had a
heap of trouble since you've been away." I had feared for Jim. With a
cultured parentage and a social caste to uphold him, he might have made
a venturesome merchant or a West Point cadet. But here he was, angry
with life and reckless; and when Farmer Durham charged him with stealing
wheat, the old man had to ride fast to escape the stones which the
furious fool hurled after him. They told Jim to run away; but he would
not run, and the constable came that afternoon. It grieved Josie, and
great awkward John walked nine miles every day to see his little brother
through the bars of Lebanon jail. At last the two came back together in
the dark night. The mother cooked supper, and Josie emptied her purse,
and the boys stole away. Josie grew thin and silent, yet worked the
more. The hill became steep for the quiet old father, and with the boys
away there was little to do in the valley. Josie helped them sell the
old farm, and they moved nearer town. Brother Dennis, the carpenter,
built a new house with six rooms; Josie toiled a year in Nashville,
and brought back ninety dollars to furnish the house and change it to a
home.

When the spring came, and the birds twittered, and the stream ran proud
and full, little sister Lizzie, bold and thoughtless, flushed with the
passion of youth, bestowed herself on the tempter, and brought home
a nameless child. Josie shivered, and worked on, with the vision of
schooldays all fled, with a face wan and tired,--worked until, on a
summer's day, some one married another; then Josie crept to her mother
like a hurt child, and slept--and sleeps.

I paused to scent the breeze as I entered the valley. The Lawrences have
gone; father and son forever, and the other son lazily digs in the earth
to live. A new young widow rents out their cabin to fat Reuben. Reuben
is a Baptist preacher now, but I fear as lazy as ever, though his cabin
has three rooms; and little Ella has grown into a bouncing woman, and is
ploughing corn on the hot hillside. There are babies a plenty, and one
half-witted girl. Across the valley is a house I did