ttage of faded white
and green, and now at a log cabin, stark and gray. Passing the mouth of
Lonesome, he flashed his scythe into its unlifting shadows and went
stalking on. High up, at the source of the dismal little stream, the
point of the shining blade darted thrice into the open door of a cabin
set deep into a shaggy flank of Black Mountain, and three spirits,
within, were quickly loosed from aching flesh for the long flight into
the unknown.

It was the spirit of the plague that passed, taking with it the breath
of the unlucky and the unfit: and in the hut on Lonesome three were
dead--a gaunt mountaineer, a gaunt daughter, and a gaunt son. Later,
the mother, too, "jes' kind o' got tired," as little Chad said, and
soon to her worn hands and feet came the well-earned rest. Nobody was
left then but Chad and Jack, and Jack was a dog with a belly to feed
and went for less than nothing with everybody but his little master and
the chance mountaineer who had sheep to guard. So, for the fourth time,
Chad, with Jack at his heels, trudged up to the point of a wooded spur
above the cabin, where, at the foot of a giant poplar and under a
wilderness of shaking June leaves, were three piles of rough boards,
loosely covering three hillocks of rain-beaten earth; and, near them,
an open grave. There was no service sung or spoken over the dead, for
the circuit-rider was then months away; so, unnoticed, Chad stood
behind the big poplar, watching the neighbors gently let down into the
shallow trench a home-made coffin, rudely hollowed from the half of a
bee-gum log, and, unnoticed, slipped away at the first muffled stroke
of the dirt--doubling his fists into his eyes and stumbling against the
gnarled bodies of laurel and rhododendron until, out in a clear sunny
space, he dropped on a thick, velvet mat of moss and sobbed himself to
sleep. When he awoke, Jack was licking his face and he sat up, dazed
and yawning. The sun was dropping fast, the ravines were filling with
blue shadows, luminous and misty, and a far drowsy tinkling from the
valley told him that cows were starting homeward. From habit, he sprang
quickly to his feet, but, sharply conscious on a sudden, dropped slowly
back to the moss again, while Jack, who had started down the spur,
circled back to see what the matter was, and stood with uplifted foot,
much puzzled.

There had been a consultation about Chad early that morning among the
neighbors, and old Nathan Cherry, who