ay, I don't believe that he'd want to come back."

"I reckon not," the mountain boy agreed. "Anyway, the school's shut up
now."

"How about the revenue men?" asked Hamilton.

"They haven't be'n here sence Teacheh went away," was the reply. "An' I
reckon they're not wanted."

The boy stopped short as the old mountaineer came over to where he was
squatting and gave him a long answer to the message he had brought. The
old man read it to him from a sheet of paper on which he had penciled it
roughly. Bill Wilsh listened in a dreamy way, and Hamilton wondered at
his seeming carelessness. The old man read it twice, then, rising to his
feet, the boy repeated it word for word and without so much as a nod to
Hamilton, slouched off in a long, lazy stride that looked like loafing,
but which, as Hamilton afterwards found out, covered the ground rapidly.

"Do you suppose he'll remember all that, Uncle Eli?" asked Hamilton in
surprise.

"He? Oh, yes," the mountaineer replied, "word for word, syllable for
syllable--that is, fo' to-day."

"He must have a good memory," the boy exclaimed "I'm sure I couldn't."

"But he'll forget every word by to-morrow," the other continued, "almost
forget that he was hyeh to-day at all. That's why they're so hard to
teach, those po' whites, what they learn doesn't stick. I heard him
tellin' yo' about the disappearance o' the last teacheh."

"Yes, he was putting it down to 'cunjering.' Is there much of that sort
of idea in the mountains?"

"None among the mount'neers proper," replied the old man. "Some o' the
po' whites down in the gullies talk about it, but thar's mo' difference
between the folks in the gullies an' on the Ridge th'n there is between
the mount'ns an' the Blue Grass. They are different, an' they look
different, too."

"Bill Wilsh certainly does," agreed Hamilton, "but I thought at first it
was because he was tired out with a long walk after a day's work."

The Kentuckian shook his head.

"They're all that way," he said. "They jes' look all beaten out as if
they hadn't any life left in them at all. I reckon the most o' them have
hookworm, too, an' they just look fit to drop."

"Hookworm, Uncle Eli? What is that?" asked the boy.

"It's a queer kind o' disease," the old man answered, "that comes from
goin' barefoot. There's a kind o' grub in the soil, and it works its way
in. It's only jes' recently that it's be'n found out that the po' whites
are peaked and backward because