ns echo softly, softly,
from the hazy sunlit heights across the valley.

"That air the doxol'gy," said Tom Brent, one day, pausing to listen
among the wagons and horses hitched outside. He was about to follow home
his father's mare, that had broken loose and galloped off through the
woods, but as he glanced back at the church, a sudden thought struck
him. He caught sight of the end of little Jim Coggin's comforter
flaunting out through the "chinking,"--as the mountaineers call the
series of short slats which are set diagonally in the spaces between the
logs of the walls, and on which the clay is thickly daubed. This work
had been badly done, and in many places the daubing had fallen away.
Thus it was that as Jim Coggin sat within the church, the end of his
plaid comforter had slipped through the chinking and was waving in the
wind outside.

Now Jim had found the weather still too warm for his heavy jeans jacket,
but he was too cool without it, and he had ingeniously compromised the
difficulty by wearing his comforter in this unique manner,--laying it on
his shoulders, crossing it over the chest, passing it under the arms,
and tying it in a knot between the shoulder-blades. Tom remembered this
with a grin as he slyly crept up to the house, and it was only the work
of a moment to draw that knot through the chinking and secure it firmly
to a sumach bush that grew near at hand.

It never occurred to him that the resounding doxology could fail to
rouse that small, tow-headed, freckle-faced boy, or that the
congregation might slowly disperse without noticing him as he sat
motionless and asleep in the dark shadow.

The sun slipped down into the red west; the blue mountains turned
purple; heavy clouds gathered, and within three miles there was no other
human creature when Jim suddenly woke to the darkness and the storm and
the terrible loneliness.

Where was he? He tried to rise: he could not move. Bewildered, he
struggled and tugged at his harness,--all in vain. As he realized the
situation, he burst into tears.

"Them home-folks o' mine won't kem hyar ter s'arch fur me," he cried
desperately, "kase I tole my mother ez how I war a-goin' ter dust down
the mounting ter Aunt Jerushy's house ez soon ez meet'n' war out an'
stay all night along o' her boys."

Still he tried to comfort himself by reflecting that it was not so bad
as it might have been. There was no danger that he would have to starve
and pine here till next