He opened the primer and laid it on
his knee, running his fingers carelessly through its dog-eared pages. "Do
you know your letters?" he inquired in a professional tone.

"Lordy, yes," responded Pinetop. "I've got about as fur as this here
place." He crossed to where Dan sat and pointed with a long forefinger to
the printed words, his mild blue eyes beaming with excitement.

"I reckon I kin read that by myself," he added with an embarrassed laugh.
"T-h-e c-a-t c-a-u-g-h-t t-h-e r-a-t. Ain't that right?"

"Perfectly. We'll pass on to the next." And they did so, sitting on the
halves of a divided flour barrel before the blazing chimney.

From this time there were regular lessons in the little hut, Pinetop
drawling over the soiled primer, or crouching, with his long legs twisted
under him and his elbows awkwardly extended, while he filled a sheet of
paper with sprawling letters.

"I'll be able to write to the old woman soon," he chuckled jubilantly, "an'
she'll have to walk all the way down the mounting to git it read."

"You'll be a scholar yet if this keeps up," replied Dan, slapping him upon
the shoulder, as the mountaineer glanced up with a pleased and shining
face. "Why, you mastered that first reader there in no time."

"A powerful heap of larnin' has to pass through yo' head to git a leetle to
stick thar," commented Pinetop, wrinkling his brows. "Air we goin' to have
the big book agin to-night?"

"The big book" was a garbled version of "Les Miserables," which, after
running the blockade with a daring English sailor, had passed from regiment
to regiment in the resting army. At first Dan had begun to read with only
Pinetop for a listener, but gradually, as the tale unfolded, a group of
eager privates filled the little hut and even hung breathlessly about the
doorway in the winter nights. They were mostly gaunt, unwashed volunteers
from the hills or the low countries, to whom literature was only a vast
silence and life a courageous struggle against greater odds. To Dan the
picturesqueness of the scene lent itself with all the force of its strong
lights and shadows, and with the glow of the pine torches on the open page,
his eyes would sometimes wander from the words to rest upon the kindling
faces in the shaggy circle by the fire. Dirty, hollow-eyed, unshaven, it
sat spellbound by the magic of the tale it could not read.

"By Gosh! that's a blamed good bishop," remarked an unkempt smoker one
evening from the t