brave, but being a girl so, it is right hard."

She started her horse to a gallop, and side by side they hurried over
the level top of the ridge--to Thryng an exhilarating moment, to her a
speeding toward some terrible, unknown trial.

CHAPTER X

IN WHICH CASSANDRA AND DAVID VISIT THE HOME OF DECATUR IRWIN

Soon the way became steep and difficult and the path so narrow they were
forced to go single file. Then Cassandra led and David followed. They
passed no dwellings, and even the little home to which they were going
was lost to view. He wondered if she were not weary, remembering that
she had been over the distance twice before that day, and begged her, as
he had done when they set out, to allow him to carry the basket, but
still she would not.

"I never think of it. I often carry things this way.--We have to here in
the mountains." She glanced back at him and smiled. "I reckon you find
it hard because you are not used to living like we do; we're soon there
now, see yonder?"

A turn in the path brought them in sight of the cabin, set in its bare,
desolate patch of red soil. About the door swarmed unkempt children of
all sizes, as bees hang out of an over-filled hive, the largest not more
than twelve years old, and the youngest carried on the mother's arm. It
was David's first visit to one of the poorest of the mountain homes, and
he surveyed the scene before him with dismay.

Below the house was a spring, and there, suspended from the
long-reaching branch of a huge beech tree, now leafless and bare, a
great, black iron pot swung by a chain over a fire built on the ground
among a heap of stones. On a board at one side lay wet, gray garments,
twisted in knots as they had been wrung out of the soapy water. The
woman had been washing, and the vapor was rising from the black pot of
boiling suds, but, seeing their approach, she had gone to her door, her
babe on her arm and the other children trooping at her heels and
clinging to her skirts. They peered up from under frowzy, overhanging
locks of hair like a group of ragged, bedraggled Scotch terriers.

The mother herself seemed scarcely older than the oldest, and Thryng
regarded her with amazement when he noticed her infantile, undeveloped
face and learned that she had brought into the world all those who
clustered about her. His amazement grew as he entered the dark little
cabin and saw that they must all eat and sleep in its one small room,
which they seeme