a West Point cadet. But here he was, angry
with life and reckless; and when Fanner Durham charged him with
stealing wheat, the old man had to ride fast to escape the stones which
the furious fool hurled after him. They told Jim to run away; but he
would not run, and the constable came that afternoon. It grieved
Josie, and great awkward John walked nine miles every day to see his
little brother through the bars of Lebanon jail. At last the two came
back together in the dark night. The mother cooked supper, and Josie
emptied her purse, and the boys stole away. Josie grew thin and
silent, yet worked the more. The hill became steep for the quiet old
father, and with the boys away there was little to do in the valley.
Josie helped them to sell the old farm, and they moved nearer town.
Brother Dennis, the carpenter, built a new house with six rooms; Josie
toiled a year in Nashville, and brought back ninety dollars to furnish
the house and change it to a home.

When the spring came, and the birds twittered, and the stream ran proud
and full, little sister Lizzie, bold and thoughtless, flushed with the
passion of youth, bestowed herself on the tempter, and brought home a
nameless child. Josie shivered and worked on, with the vision of
schooldays all fled, with a face wan and tired,--worked until, on a
summer's day, some one married another; then Josie crept to her mother
like a hurt child, and slept--and sleeps.

I paused to scent the breeze as I entered the valley. The Lawrences
have gone,--father and son forever,--and the other son lazily digs in
the earth to live. A new young widow rents out their cabin to fat
Reuben. Reuben is a Baptist preacher now, but I fear as lazy as ever,
though his cabin has three rooms; and little Ella has grown into a
bouncing woman, and is ploughing corn on the hot hillside. There are
babies a-plenty, and one half-witted girl. Across the valley is a
house I did not know before, and there I found, rocking one baby and
expecting another, one of my schoolgirls, a daughter of Uncle Bird
Dowell. She looked somewhat worried with her new duties, but soon
bristled into pride over her neat cabin and the tale of her thrifty
husband, and the horse and cow, and the farm they were planning to buy.

My log schoolhouse was gone. In its place stood Progress; and
Progress, I understand, is necessarily ugly. The crazy foundation
stones still marked the former site of my poor little cabin, and not