Category: Novels
|THERE had once been a path along the backbone of the mountain, but the wilderness had undertaken to remove it, and had almost succeeded. The wind had gathered bits of moss, twigs and dead stuff into the slight depression. The great hickories had covered it with leaves. The ra...
|THERE had once been a path along the backbone of the mountain, but the wilderness had undertaken to remove it, and had almost succeeded. The wind had gathered bits of moss, twi...
2. CHAPTER II|WHEN the man came out into the mountain road, he saw the little boy sitting on the sack of corn beside the red ox, and he smiled as he had smiled at the hammering birds, at the...
3. mill. There the stream descended swiftly over ridges of sandstone into adam of ancient logs. The mill sat beside the road, its roof projecting, its porch raised above the ground, its door and its gable open, its entrance coated with white dust.
4. CHAPTER III|THE man stood out in the road looking toward the south. The country under his eye was primitive. The mountains rose in benches, heavily wooded. On one of these benches stood a...
5. CHAPTER IV|AT SUNRISE the following morning, a man riding a lean bay horse came down the mountain road toward the mill. His left hand was deformed, as though from infancy. The fingers dou...
6. CHAPTER V|A MAN driving a country buggy was approaching. He was a tall, spare man, in a suit of black ready-made clothes that seemed not to fit him in any place, and to be a cheap imitat...
7. CHAPTER VI|THE School-teacher came out of the door of Nicholas Parks' house. It was early in the morning. Frost glistened on the rails of the worm fence. The air was crisp and sweet.
8. CHAPTER VII|IN THE grove before the log schoolhouse, the Teacher was playing a game with the children. It was a game in which every child to the tiniest one could join. Two, standing oppos...
9. CHAPTER VIII|IT WAS not the only adventure that the School-teacher was destined to meet with on this day. As he was returning along the mountain road, with the little boy on his shoulder, a...
10. CHAPTER IXHe had taken the shirts which she had offered to him, but he had refused to put upon her the labor of making up the big piece of linen that remained.
11. CHAPTER X|THE children had bought the School-teacher a hat. It had been a large undertaking, and the cause of innumerable secret conferences in the grove behind the schoolhouse. The purc...
12. CHAPTER XI“No, it didn't git well of itself,” replied the woman. “It never would have got well of itself. Ole Jerry's been set-tin' around with that eye tied up ever since the day that he...
13. CHAPTER XIIIt was afternoon before the doctor returned. He rode hard in anger. He had gone on to Black's house, determined to make the old man pay him for his visit. But the mountaineer, n...
14. CHAPTER XIII|EARLY on Monday morning an old man driving a gray mare in a two-wheeled cart came slowly up the road to the schoolhouse. A lank colt followed the mare. The cart was very old, n...
15. CHAPTER XIV|ALL day long the little boy was with the School-teacher. The child and the dog watched for the man to come out of the forest in the morning. When the dog barked, the little boy...
16. CHAPTER XVOn Wednesday night, in the church at the county seat, two persons attended the minister's mid-weekly meeting, who were not members of the congregation. These two persons, the sh...
17. CHAPTER XVIThe county seat of this mountain county was nothing more than a village, lying in the foothills. The courthouse stood in a grove of oak trees, in the middle of the village. It w...
18. CHAPTER XVII|THE several persons who had forced the judge to commit the School-teacher to the county jail, having gone down from the courthouse, remained throughout the day in conference. I...