or the debt must continue to accumulate
very slowly when so much time must be given to the daily business of
teaching, for which he was very poorly paid, and he could not know
freedom until that debt was paid. In literary work, too, he could
combine the cause of mountain need with his daily task with equal
effectiveness in both directions, for could he not portray with great
pathos the mental, spiritual and material poverty of his people? And
he stifled for the moment something within him which cried, "Others
might do that, but never one of our own!" Beside all this it was
probable, as Mr. Polk had said, that money was more sorely needed for
schools than personal service and he believed by giving himself to
literary work he could earn it. He had never been perfectly sure that
giving his life to teaching and personal work among his people was the
best method of helping them, so he need not feel chagrined by any
inconsistency.

So great was the temptation which came to him at this crisis that he
determined when the session closed to go for a visit to Mirandy's
family and from there to the Follets, with the thought that he would
not like to leave the mountains without seeing them, and it would
doubtless be best to go east for his literary career. In this
satisfactory justification of the latter visit he allowed himself the
freedom of pleasant reminiscence about the spot where life first began
to really unfold for him.

"Little Nancy," he said to himself, "why she must be nineteen now,
clothed in long frocks and maidenly dignity, I suspect,--but I
certainly hope she still wears the little white pinafores." And his
eyes grew misty with a tenderness which he would have classified as
brotherly, had it occurred to him to question himself. Then he smiled
suddenly and said, "Yes, I must go and see about those pinafores
before I leave the mountains."

He made the visit to Hollow Hut first, and in the ease of a saddle
seat he reached the old familiar wood by a much more direct trail than
he had followed when a boy. He halted his pony at last by the great
boulder where Tige lay buried. The tragedy of his grief on that
long-ago morning when he had touched the stiffened body of his old
friend came back to him with such vividness that, in spite of "Time's
long caressing hand," he could not "smile beholding it." He hitched
his horse close by with a sense of the old dog's nearness and
protection, for he meant to camp on that spot dur