hstanding a liking for me, remarked with feeling,
"She's a wonder! I don't see how you got her."

To which I replied, "Neither do I."

In setting down these derogatory comments I do not wish to imply that I
was positively detested but that I was not a beloved county institution
was soon evident to my wife. Delegations of school children did not call
upon me, and very few of my fellow citizens pointed out my house to
travelers--at that time. In truth little of New England's regard for
authorship existed in the valley and my head possessed no literary
aureole. The fact that I could--and did--send away bundles of manuscript
and get in return perfectly good checks for them, was a miracle of
doubtful virtue to my relatives as well as to my neighbors. My money
came as if by magic, unasked and unwarranted, like the gold of sunset.
"I don't see how you do it," my Uncle Frank said to me one day, and his
tone implied that he considered my authorship a questionable kind of
legerdemain, as if I were, somehow, getting money under false pretenses.

Rightly or wrongly, I had never pretended to a keen concern in the
"social doings" of my village. Coming to the valley out of regard for my
father and mother and not from personal choice, the only folk who
engaged my attention were the men and women of the elder generation,
rugged pioneer folk who brought down to me something of the humor, the
poetry, and the stark heroism of the Border in the days when the Civil
War was a looming cloud, and the "Pineries" a limitless wilderness on
the north. Men like Sam McKinley, William Fletcher, and Wilbur Dudley
retained my friendship and my respect, but the affairs of the younger
generation did not greatly concern me. In short, I considered the
relationship between them and myself fortuitous.

Absorbed in my writing I was seldom in the mood during my visits to
entertain curious neighbors, in fact I had met few people outside my
relatives. All this was very ungracious, no doubt, but such had been my
attitude for seven years. I came there to work and I worked.

Even now, in the midst of my honeymoon, I wrote busily. Each morning
immediately after breakfast I returned to my study, where the manuscript
of a novel (_Her Mountain Lover_) was slowly growing into final shape,
but in the afternoons Zulime and I occasionally went sleighing with
Dolly and the cutter, or we worked about the house.

It was a peaceful time, with only one thought to stir the p