egin the
first of August, they explained that the children must go home and help
their parents hoe corn during May, June and July.

All day the children who are to live in the school, and many more who
hope to, were arriving, afoot or on nags, the boys, however small, in
long trousers and black felt hats like their fathers, the girls a little
more cheerfully dressed than their mothers, whose black sun-bonnets and
somber homespun dresses were depressing. Many of the parents stayed to
dinner. There is a fine, old-fashioned dignity in their manners, and
great gentleness in their voices. I have always heard that, shut away
here in these mountains, some of the purest and best Anglo-Saxon blood
in the nation is to be found; now I am sure of it. It was pathetic to
see the eagerness of these men and women that their children should get
learning, and to hear many of them tell how they themselves had had no
chance whatever at an education, being raised probably sixty or eighty
miles from a school-house.

Late in the afternoon, as Philip, Geordie and I were fastening up
straying rose-vines on the pine-tree pillars of the "big house" porch, a
one-legged and very feeble man, accompanied by a boy, dismounted at the
gate and came up the walk on a crutch. During the time he sat on the
porch, my two assistants abandoned their work to stare open-mouthed at
him. When he was called in to see the heads, Geordie inquired of his
boy,

"How'd your paw git all lamed up thataway?"

[Illustration: "My two assistants abandoned work to stare open-mouthed
at him."]

The new arrival pulled his black hat down, frowned, and measured Geordie
with gray, combative eyes, before replying, coldly,

"Warring with the Cheevers."

"Gee-oh, air you one of the Marrses from Trigger Branch of Powderhorn?"

"Yes."

"What's your name?"

"Nucky."

"How old air you?"

"Going-on-twelve."

"What kin is Blant Marrs to you?"

"My brother."

"You don't say so! Gee, I wisht I could see him! Have you holp any in
the war?"

"Some." Here Nucky was called in, to the evident disappointment of his
interlocutor. Later, I saw him at the supper-table, gazing
disapprovingly about him.

After supper I had a few minutes talk with the busy head-workers, and
placed myself at their disposal, with the explanation that I really knew
very little about anything, except music and gardening. They said these
things are just what they have been wanting,--that a friend has