eral instances of true friendship related.
One was about Blant and Rich Tarrant. During active hostilities on
Trigger last winter, Blant was getting out yellow poplar timber from the
top of his mountain, almost under the shadow of the "high rocks" on the
summit, Richard assisting him. Happening to cast his eyes upward,
Richard was just in time to see the muzzle of a gun projecting over the
rocks, and to throw himself in front of Blant and receive the discharge
in his own bosom. Had it been an inch farther to the right, it would
have pierced his heart. As it was, he made a troublesome recovery.

"That's what I call right friendship," said Nucky; "there haint a minute
in the day when him and Blant wouldn't lay down their life for each
other, glad."

"Who was it shot the gun?" inquired Philip.

"Oh, Todd. We knowed it later when he went about with his left hand tied
up,--Blant fired as the bullet hit Rich, at the hand that held the gun.
We Marrses don't do no low-down fighting,--we allus fight in the open.
And the Cheevers used to; but Todd is a snake in the grass, and don't
stop at nothing."

_Thursday._

While at the big house talking with the head-workers yesterday, they
showed me some albums of photographs made in the beginnings of their
work here, before the school was even thought of, and when they came up
from the Blue Grass only in the summers, and lived in tents, having
classes in cooking, sewing, singing, nursing and the like. I turned the
pages with eagerness, hearing enthralling tales as I went, and stopped
at last before a small picture of strange beauty. In a blaze of
firelight, against a dusky log-cabin interior, sat a young mother with a
child clasped in her arms. The serene, Madonna-like tenderness of face
and attitude made the photograph memorable and surprising.

"Many persons have admired that picture," said one of the heads; "we
took it years ago, over on Rakeshin Creek, late one afternoon when,
weary from a long tramp, we walked in upon a young mother and her child
in the firelight. We spent the night there afterward."

"On Rakeshin!" I exclaimed. "How long ago was it?"

"Eight years, I should say."

"Do you suppose--could it have been, the wife and child of Mr. Atkins?"

"That's exactly who it was," she replied,--"one of his wives, I hardly
remember which."

"I know," I said; "it was Iry's mother. And that wonderful child
remembers the very hour! Only Sunday he was telling of the