rough and untrimmed, and yet there were
the same fences around the old farm save to the left, where lay
twenty-five other acres. And lo! the cabin in the hollow had climbed
the hill and swollen to a half-finished six-room cottage.

The Burkes held a hundred acres, but they were still in debt. Indeed,
the gaunt father who toiled night and day would scarcely be happy out
of debt, being so used to it. Some day he must stop, for his massive
frame is showing decline. The mother wore shoes, but the lion-like
physique of other days was broken. The children had grown up. Rob,
the image of his father, was loud and rough with laughter. Birdie, my
school baby of six, had grown to a picture of maiden beauty, tall and
tawny. "Edgar is gone," said the mother, with head half bowed,--"gone
to work in Nashville; he and his father couldn't agree."

Little Doc, the boy born since the time of my school, took me horseback
down the creek next morning toward Farmer Dowell's. The road and the
stream were battling for mastery, and the stream had the better of it.
We splashed and waded, and the merry boy, perched behind me, chattered
and laughed. He showed me where Simon Thompson had bought a bit of
ground and a home; but his daughter Lana, a plump, brown, slow girl,
was not there. She had married a man and a farm twenty miles away. We
wound on down the stream till we came to a gate that I did not
recognize, but the boy insisted that it was "Uncle Bird's." The farm
was fat with the growing crop. In that little valley was a strange
stillness as I rode up; for death and marriage had stolen youth and
left age and childhood there. We sat and talked that night after the
chores were done. Uncle Bird was grayer, and his eyes did not see so
well, but he was still jovial. We talked of the acres bought,--one
hundred and twenty-five,--of the new guest-chamber added, of Martha's
marrying. Then we talked of death: Fanny and Fred were gone; a shadow
hung over the other daughter, and when it lifted she was to go to
Nashville to school. At last we spoke of the neighbors, and as night
fell, Uncle Bird told me how, on a night like that, 'Thenie came
wandering back to her home over yonder, to escape the blows of her
husband. And next morning she died in the home that her little
bow-legged brother, working and saving, had bought for their widowed
mother.

My journey was done, and behind me lay hill and dale, and Life and
Death. How shall ma