o put the world into the wailing minor key
of his own despair.

What a fascination there is in a path come upon suddenly without a
knowledge of its termination! Here was one running in easy, irregular
curves through the wood, now turning gently to the right in order to
avoid a stump, now swaying suddenly to the left to gain an easier
descent at a steep place, and now turning wantonly to the one side or
the other, as if from very caprice in the man who by idle steps
unconsciously marked the line of the foot-path at first. Ralph could not
resist the impulse--who could?--to follow the path and find out its
destination, and following it he came presently into a lonesome hollow,
where a brook gurgled among the heaps of bare limestone rocks that
filled its bed. Following the path still, he came upon a queer little
cabin built of round logs, in the midst of a small garden-patch inclosed
by a brush fence. The stick chimney, daubed with clay and topped with
a barrel open at both ends, made this a typical cabin.

[Illustration: CAPTAIN PEARSON]

It flashed upon Ralph that this place must be Rocky Hollow, and that
this was the house of old John Pearson, the one-legged basket-maker, and
his rheumatic wife--the house that hospitably sheltered Shocky.
Following his impulse, he knocked and was admitted, and was not a little
surprised to find Miss Martha Hawkins there before him.

"You here, Miss Hawkins?" he said when he had returned Shocky's greeting
and shaken hands with the old couple.

"Bless you, yes," said the old lady. "That blessed gyirl"--the old lady
called her a girl by a sort of figure of speech perhaps--"that blessed
gyirl's the kindest creetur you ever saw--comes here every day, most, to
cheer a body up with somethin' or nuther."

Miss Martha blushed, and said "she came because Rocky Hollow looked so
much like a place she used to know at the East. Mr. and Mrs. Pearson
were the kindest people. They reminded her of people she knew at the
East. When she was to Bosting--"

Here the old basket-maker lifted his head from his work, and said:
"Pshaw! that talk about kyindness" (he was a Kentuckian and said
_kyindness_) "is all humbug. I wonder so smart a woman as you don't
know better. You come nearder to bein kyind than anybody I know; but,
laws a me! we're all selfish akordin' to my tell."

"You wasn't selfish when you set up with my father most every night for
two weeks," said Shocky as he handed the old man a splint