ier far, even
in heaven. For it is that which makes heaven."

Blant had dinner for us at eleven, and soon afterward we were ready to
depart. "Come over and see us sometime at the school," I called to
Blant, as he stood with the babe on his arm by the gate. He thanked me
gravely, but did not say he would come.

"Gee," said Nucky, as we rode on, "he can't never do that,--why they'd
just _have_ to arrest him if he run into the jaws of the sheriff and the
jail that way!"

We made the last hour or two of our journey through moonlight in which
the mist-hung mountains and shadowed valleys lay entrancingly lovely.

"This is the kind of nights I allus keep watch for the Cheevers," said
Nucky.

I wondered if these were the sole thoughts aroused in him by the
wondrous beauty in which he had been born and bred. Presently I knew.

"If maw is in heaven, like you say, do you allow the country round about
there is any prettier than this here?" he asked.

"No, I am sure not," I replied, emphatically.

XII

THE FIGHTINGEST BOY

_Tuesday Night_.

Nucky ran in to-night from shinny, to have a "broke" ankle tied up, (it
seems to me I am always tying up either "risings," "biles," sores or
hurts) and said to me while I did it,

"That 'ere little Jason is just a-chawing up and spitting out them
little day-schools. This morning at recess I seed him whup out
five-at-a-time. Yes, sir, five was on him, and by Ned if he didn't lay
out the last one. He's the fightingest boy you got!"

"I thought you were that," I said.

"Dad burn ole Heck if ever I seed the day I could lay out five of my
size at a time! Going to school there on Trigger, I have whupped out as
many as three Cheever young uns at a time; but five! Gee! I wisht I
knowed how he done it!"

These accounts of Jason's prowess seem unbelievable; but from the mouths
of many witnesses I gather that they must be true. I, too, wonder how he
does it.

_Wednesday._

Evidently Jason's success with the little primaries is going to his
head, for to-day he attacked Hen Salyer, who is a head taller, and would
have vanquished him had not Keats come to the rescue. As it was, he gave
the Salyers a lively battle, and enormously increased their respect for
him. My most vigorous applications of the rod appear powerless to curb
this aggressiveness.

_Thursday._

While we were out in force this afternoon, digging the ditch which is to
drain our garden, Nucky s