eace.

Within, there was a great contrast to the black night outside. The ash
and hickory logs in the deep fireplace threw blue and yellow flames high
up the wide stone chimney. The flickering light was like some genial,
cheery smile forever coming and going.

It illumined the circle about the hearth. There sat Sol's mother, idle
to-night, for it was Sunday. His grandmother, too, was there, so old
that she seemed to confirm the story told of these healthy mountains, to
the effect that people are obliged to go down in the valley to die, else
they would live forever.

There was Sol's father, a great burly fellow, six feet three inches in
height, still holding out his hands to the blaze, chilled through and
through by his long ride from the church where he had been to hear the
circuit-rider preach on "Forgiveness of Injuries."

He was beginning now to quarrel vehemently with his brother-in-law,
Jacob Smith, about the shabby treatment he had recently experienced in
the non-payment of work,--for work in this country is a sort of
circulating medium; a man will plough a day for another man, on
condition that the favor is rigorously reciprocated.

Jacob Smith had been to the still, and apparently had imbibed the spirit
there prevailing, to more effect than Sol's father had absorbed the
spirit that had been taught in church.

In plain words, Jacob Smith was very drunk, and very quarrelsome, and
very unreasonable. The genial firelight that played upon his bloated
face played also over objects much pleasanter to look upon,--over the
strings of red pepper-pods hanging from the rafters; over the bright
variegations of color in the clean patchwork quilt on the bed; over the
shining pans and pails set aside on the shelf; over the great, curious
frame of the warping-bars, rising up among the shadows on the other side
of the room, the equidistant pegs still holding the sized yarn that
Solomon's mother had been warping, preparatory to weaving.

On the other side of the room, too, was a little tow-headed child
sitting in a cradle, which, small as he was, he had long ago outgrown as
a bed.

It was only a pine box placed upon rude rockers, and he used it for a
rocking-chair. His bare, fat legs hung out on one side of the box, and
as he delightedly rocked back and forth, his grotesque little shadow
waved to and fro on the wall, and mocked and flouted him.

What he thought of it, nobody can ever know; his grave eyes were fixed
upon