ost itself forever in a single
furrow of those mighty flanks. When Bradley had once asked Sharpe why he
had not built his house in the ravine, the blacksmith had replied: "That
until the Lord had appointed his time, he reckoned to keep his head
above ground and the foundations thereof." Howbeit, the ravine, or the
"run," as it was locally known, was Minty's only Saturday afternoon
resort for recreation or berries. "It was," she had explained, "pow'ful
soothin', and solitary."

She entered the house--a rude, square building of unpainted
boards--containing a sitting-room, a kitchen, and two bedrooms. A glance
at these rooms, which were plainly furnished, and whose canvas-colored
walls were adorned with gorgeous agricultural implement
circulars, patent medicine calendars, with polytinted chromos and
cheaply-illuminated Scriptural texts, showed her that a certain neatness
and order had been preserved during her absence; and, finding the house
empty, she crossed the barren and blackened intervening space between
the back door and her father's forge, and entered the open shed. The
light was fading from the sky; but the glow of the forge lit up the
dusty road before it, and accented the blackness of the rocky ledge
beyond. A small curly-headed boy, bearing a singular likeness to a
smudged and blackened crayon drawing of Minty, was mechanically
blowing the bellows and obviously intent upon something else; while her
father--a powerfully built man, with a quaintly dissatisfied expression
of countenance--was with equal want of interest mechanically hammering
at a horseshoe. Without noticing Minty's advent, he lazily broke into a
querulous drawling chant of some vague religious character:

"O tur-ren, sinner; tur-ren.
For the Lord bids you turn--ah!
O tur-ren, sinner; tur-ren.
Why will you die?"

The musical accent adapted itself to the monotonous fall of the
sledge-hammer; and at every repetition of the word "turn" he suited the
action to the word by turning the horseshoe with the iron in his left
hand. A slight grunt at the end of every stroke, and the simultaneous
repetition of "turn" seemed to offer him amusement and relief. Minty,
without speaking, crossed the shop, and administered a sound box on her
brother's ear. "Take that, and let me ketch you agen layin' low when my
back's turned, to put on your store pants."

"The others had fetched away in the laig," said the boy, opposing a knee
and elbow at