gain before the dense vapor shut the house from view.
His mother was standing in the door, with her baby in her arms, looking
after him with a frightened, beseeching face. But his heart was hardened
and he kept on,--kept on, with that deft, even tread of the mountaineer,
who seems never to hurry, almost to loiter, but gets over the ground
with surprising rapidity.

He left the mists and desolation of Poor Valley far behind, but not that
frightened, beseeching face. He thought of it more often when he lay
down under the shelter of a great rock to sleep than he did of the howl
of the wolf which he had heard the night before, not far from here.

Late the next afternoon he came upon the outskirts of a village. He
entered it doubtfully, for it seemed metropolitan to him, unaccustomed
as he was to anything more imposing than the cross-roads store. But the
first sound he heard reassured him. It was the clear, metallic resonance
of an anvil, the clanking of a sledge, and the clinking of a
hand-hammer.

Here, at the forge, he found work. It had been said in Poor Valley that
he was already as good a blacksmith even as Pearce Tallam. He had great
natural aptitude for the work, and considerable experience. But his
wages only sufficed to pay for his food and lodging. Still, there was a
prospect for more, and he was content.

In his leisure he made friends among those of his own age, who took him
about the town and enjoyed his amazement. He examined everything wrought
in metal with such eager interest, and was so outspoken about his
ambition, that they dubbed him Tubal-cain.

He was struck dumb with amazement when, for the first time in his life,
he saw a locomotive gliding along the rails, with a glaring headlight
and a cloud of flying sparks. Once, when it was motionless on the track,
they talked to the engineer, who explained "the workings of the
critter," as Ike called it.

The boy understood so readily that the engineer said, after a time,
"You're a likely feller, for such a derned ignoramus! Where have you
been hid out, all this time?"

"Way down in Pore Valley," said Ike very humbly.

"He's concluded to be a great inventor," said one of his young friends,
with a merry wink.

"He's a mighty artificer in iron," said the wit who had named him
Tubal-cain.

The engineer looked gravely at Ike. "Why, boy," he admonished him, "the
world has got a hundred years the start of you!"

"I kin ketch up," Ike declared sturdily.