hen he was away
on these drinking trips.

"Alvin is jes like his father," she said. "They were both slow to start
trouble, but ef either one would git into hit, they'd go through with
the job and there'd be a-hurtin'."

But since the fist fights of boyhood Alvin York has never had a personal
encounter. His intents and deeds do not lead him into difficulties, and
in his eye there is a calm blue light that steadies the impulses of men
given to explosions of passion and anger.

At a basket-dinner where he and his friends were drinking he took his
last drink. To these outings the girls bring, in a woven, hickory
basket, a dinner for two. The baskets are auctioned, the proceeds are
given to some church charity, and the purchaser and the girl have dinner
together. They are often expensive parties to a serious-minded mountain
swain who can not surrender the day's privileges to a rival or will not
yield his dignity and rights to fun-makers who enliven the biddings by
making the basket, brought by "his girl," cost at least as much as a
marriage license.

Alvin's mother had often pleaded with her boy that he was not his real
self--not his better self--while drinking. Something happened at a
basket-party in 1914 that caused the full meaning of his mother's
solicitude to come to him. He left, declaring he would never take
another drink, and his drinking and gambling days ended together.

Late in the afternoons in the fall months, when the squirrels are out
[so the story runs in the valley, but without confirmation from the
Sergeant], Alvin would be seen leaving home with his gun. He would cut
across the fields to the west and pass along the outskirts of the farm
of Squire F. A. Williams. Those who saw him wondered why he should take
this long course to the woods, while on the mountain above his home the
oak and beech masts were plentiful and other hunters were going there
for the squirrels.

About this same time, the wife of Squire Williams noted with pleasure
that Gracie, her youngest daughter--a girl of sixteen with golden hair
and eyes that mirror the blue of the sky--went willingly to the woodlots
for the cows. When she returned with them she was singing, and this,
too, pleased Mrs. Williams.

The road from Squire Williams' home to the church passes the York home;
and, after the service, as far as his gate, Alvin would often walk with
them. As Gracie was silent and timid when any stranger was near, so
diffident that