o git shed of it. Don't you let me hear no mo' o' your goin'
over the mountains arter city folks."

The prejudice of some mountaineers against the city is deep-seated.
They have little use for the "settlements," meaning the smaller towns,
but the city is their abomination. Jim Langly's prejudice was even
stronger than that of the average mountain man of this type, for it
had been a matter of contention between himself and his wife in the
early days of their married life. She had always longed to see what
was beyond the mountains and besieged him to go till the subject could
no more be mentioned between them.

Steve soon climbed to his bed in a corner of the room with a very
heavy heart. If city folks weren't to be depended on then he would
never get that watch, and all the beautiful visions of learning to do
things in a wonderful new world grew dim and uncertain. So heavy was
his heart as he fell asleep that when he waked at daylight, it was
with a terrible sense of loss and grief. The morning meal over he
wandered off with Tige, dull and dejected, till the unlucky rabbit had
crossed his path and stirred strange, resentful enmity towards his
little familiar contestants of the woods. Sending the dog angrily off
he skinned the rabbit with savage jerks and then carried it at once
back to his home, saying:

"Fry it, 'Randy, fry it dog-goned hard."

His mother caught the sullen, angry tone, and when Mirandy went out
in the kitchen to begin the dinner, she called him from where he sat
on the door-step.

"Come here, sonny."

It was a rare term of endearment, and Steve got up quickly and went to
her side.

"Don't think too much o' whut ye pappy said about city folks. He's
allus hated 'em fer some reason, I don't know whut, 'less hit was
'cause I saw one when I was a gal afore we married, nuver min' how ner
where, and arter that I allus wanted to see whut was over the
mountings. Ef ever ye git a chanct I want ye ter go thar an' larn ter
do things. I'd er done hit ef I'd er been a man. But don't say nothin'
to ye pappy."

This caution was unnecessary; and what a change the simple words made
for Steve! His spirit bounded up into the world of visions again, and
when dinner was on the table he refused to take a mouthful of the
savoury rabbit, so ashamed was he of the manner of its killing.

After this his mind was constantly on the watch which was to come. How
it was to reach him he did not think out, for the simple reas