ace, as she
turned toward home.

"Well, good-by, ole woman," said Pearson, as he took up his little
handkerchief full of things and started for his hiding-place; "good-by.
I didn't never think I'd desart you, and ef the old flintlock hadn't a
been rusty, I'd a staid and died right here by the ole cabin. But I
reckon 'ta'n't best to be brash[22]." And Shocky looked after him, as he
hobbled away over the stones, more than ever convinced that God had
forgotten all about things on Flat Creek. He gravely expressed his
opinion to the master the next day.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 22: The elaborate etymological treatment of this word in its
various forms in our best dictionary is a fine illustration of the fact
that something more than scholarship is needed for penetrating the
mysteries of current folk-speech. _Brash_--often _bresh_--in the sense
of refuse boughs of trees, is only another form of _brush_; the two are
used as one word by the people. _Brash_ in the sense of brittle has no
conscious connection with the noun in popular usage, but it is accounted
by the people the same word as _brash_ in the sense of rash or
impetuous. The suggestion in the Century Dictionary that the words
spelled _brash_ are of modern formation violates the soundest canon of
antiquarian research, which is that a word phrase or custom widely
diffused among plain or rustic people is of necessity of ancient origin.
Now _brash_, the adjective, exists in both senses in two or three of the
most widely separated dialects of the United States, and hence must have
come from England. Indeed, it appears in Wright's Dictionary of
Provincial English in precisely the sense it has in the text.]

CHAPTER XVIII.

ODDS AND ENDS.

The Spring-in-rock, or, as it was sometimes, by a curious perversion,
called, the "rock-in-spring," was a spring running out of a cave-like
fissure in a high limestone cliff. Here the old man sheltered himself on
that dreary Christmas evening, until Bud brought his roan colt to the
top of the cliff above, and he and Ralph helped the old man up the cliff
and into the saddle. Ralph went back to bed, but Bud, who was only too
eager to put in his best licks, walked by the side of old John Pearson
the six miles over to Buckeye Run, and at last, after eleven o'clock, he
deposited him in a hollow sycamore by the road, there to wait the coming
of the mail-wagon that would carry him into Jackson County.

"Good-by," said the basket-ma