walked erect and confident. His pace slackened.
Carelessly now his feet tramped beds of soft exquisite moss and lone
little settlements of forget-me-nots, and his long riflebarrel brushed
laurel blossoms down in a shower behind him. Once even, he picked up
one of the pretty bells and looked idly at it, turning it bottom
upward. The waxen cup might have blossomed from a tiny waxen star.
There was a little green star for a calyx; above this, a little white
star with its prongs outstretched--tiny arms to hold up the
pink-flecked chalice for the rain and dew. There came a time when he
thought of it as a star-blossom; but now his greedy tongue swept the
honey from it and he dropped it without another thought to the ground.
At the first spur down which the road turned, he could see smoke in the
valley. The laurel blooms and rhododendron bells hung in thicker
clusters and of a deeper pink. Here and there was a blossoming wild
cucumber and an umbrella-tree with huger flowers and leaves; and,
sometimes, a giant magnolia with a thick creamy flower that the boy
could not have spanned with both hands and big, thin oval leaves, a
man's stride from tip to stem. Soon, he was below the sunlight and in
the cool shadows where the water ran noisily and the air hummed with
the wings of bees. On the last spur, he came upon a cow browsing on
sassafras-bushes right in the path and the last shadow of his
loneliness straightway left him. She was old, mild, and unfearing, and
she started down the road in front of him as though she thought he had
come to drive her home, or as though she knew he was homeless and was
leading him to shelter. A little farther on, the river flashed up a
welcome to him through the trees and at the edge of the water, her
mellow bell led him down stream and he followed. In the next hollow, he
stooped to drink from a branch that ran across the road and, when he
rose to start again, his bare feet stopped as though riven suddenly to
the ground; for, half way up the next low slope, was another figure as
motionless as his--with a bare head, bare feet, a startled face and
wide eyes--but motionless only until the eyes met his: then there was a
flash of bright hair and scarlet homespun, and the little feet, that
had trod down the centuries to meet his, left the earth as though they
had wings and Chad saw them, in swift flight, pass silently over the
hill. The next moment, Jack came too near the old brindle and, with a
sweep of h