to rest and cool her face
before beginning to eat, while the mother still occupied a chimney
corner, pipe in mouth, for she "hadn't wanted nothin' to eat lately,
her stomick seemed off the hooks somehow." These, with the boy,
composed the family, a row of graves out under the trees at the back
of the hut filling the long gap between Mirandy, a young woman of
twenty-one, and Steve. The boy sat down, but before he ate that
remarkable tale of his morning experience had to be told. When he was
done the father said:

"Huh, better let city folks alone; don't have nothin' to do with none
of 'em."

The boy, feeling the rebuke, then turned to his supper, but when his
father had gone out to smoke, and Mirandy was in the lane looking for
her sweetheart, Steve stole up to his mother's side and stood digging
his toe in the sand hearth.

"Mammy," he said at last, "what makes that man diffrunt from we uns?"

The old woman smoked a moment in silence and then said:

"Wal, there's a heap over the mountains what makes him diffrunt,--things
we ain' never seen ner heern tell on." She smoked again a puff or two,
then added, "I recken schoolin's the most."

"What's schoolin'?" said the boy.

"Larnin' things," she replied.

The subject of schools had never been discussed in the boy's hearing.
His father didn't believe in them, there wasn't a book, not even a
Bible, in all the scattered little remote mountain community, and if
the boy had ever heard either books or schools mentioned before the
words had made no impression on him.

"Do they larn to make watch things thar?" he asked.

His mother said she supposed so, "she knew they larned out o' things
they called books," and then she explained as best she could to him
what schools and books were. When his father came in again Steve said
boldly:

"Pappy, I'm er goin' over the mountains an' larn how to make them
watch things."

The mountaineer stood as if paralyzed a moment, then his dull eyes
blazed.

"No, you won't nuther! Not a step will ye go! Ye shan't nuver hev
nothin' to do with no city folks, so help me God!"

The boy dropped back cowed and trembling; he had never seen his father
so stirred. He didn't dare ask a question, but when the mountaineer
had seated himself in the chimney corner opposite his wife, he
continued:

"City folks with all their larnin', fine clothes an' fine ways ain't
to be depended on. I wouldn't trus' one of 'em with a jay bird lessen
I wanted t