"That's great!" exclaimed Hamilton. "I don't believe I ever saw better
carving than that anywhere."

A momentary gleam of pleasure flashed into the boy's dull eyes, but he
went on again in the same lifeless voice.

"Thar's the schoolhouse jes' as it was when he was here last, but it's
never looked the same to me sence. I want yo' to give this to him an'
show him, if yo' will, that I whittled it with the door open, jes' to
show him we're lookin' for him back."

"But supposing I shouldn't meet him in the city?" queried Hamilton
gently. "Washington is a large place and there are many other cities."

"I reckon you-all have mo' chance o' findin' him thar than I have hyeh.
I reckon he an't goin' to come back hyeh, an' then he'd never know that
we an't fo'gotten him, an' he'd think we was ungrateful. But yo'll try
an' find him?"

Hamilton was conscious of a lump in his throat at the simple
faithfulness of the mountain boy, and he said gently:

"Very well, Bill, if you feel that way about it, of course I'll try.
But you haven't told me his name as yet."

"I was thinkin' o' that," the boy answered. Then he took from his pocket
a home-made gum-wood case, and opening it, took out a small piece of
paper and handed it to Hamilton.

"Be keerful of it," he said, "that paper tears mighty easy."

Hamilton smoothed the paper out on the palm of his hand, and looked at
it carefully. It was a "copy," merely of pothooks, done in lead pencil,
the strokes wavering and of differing slopes, and the whole so smudged
as scarcely to be recognizable But, down in the corner, written in ink,
in a firm, bold hand, were the words, "Very Good, Gregory Sinclair."

Hamilton copied the name into his notebook and, refolding the paper as
carefully as possible in the same folds, he handed it to the barefooted
boy standing on the road beside his horse's head.

"Did you-all read it?" he asked.

"Yes," said Hamilton.

"Did you-all see that he said 'Very Good'?"

"'Very Good' was what was written," agreed Hamilton, thinking of the
wavering and smudged pothooks.

"I c'n do better now," the boy said quietly, "an' I've been tryin' jes'
as hard as though Teacheh was in yonder schoolhouse. But thar's no one
to write 'Very Good' on 'em any mo', an' I reckon thar an't goin' to be.
But I'm trustin' that you'll fin' him an' you'll tell him that he an't
fo'gotten."

Without a word of farewell, the boy struck into the woods and was lost
to sight. The tw