f paper into the grave. I
suppose they thought it a crazy whim of hers--they who saw her do it. I
thought that I understood the curious bit of symbolism and so did the
schoolmaster, who stood beside me. Doubtless the pieces of paper
numbered her curses.

"The scarlet sins of his youth are lying down with him in the dust,"
Hacket whispered as we walked away together.

END OF BOOK TWO

BOOK THREE

Which is the Story of the Chosen Ways

CHAPTER XV

UNCLE PEABODY'S WAY AND MINE

I am old and love my ease and sometimes dare to think that I have earned
it. Why do I impose upon myself the task of writing down these memories,
searching them and many notes and records with great care so that in
every voice and deed the time shall speak? My first care has been that
neither vanity nor pride should mar a word of all these I have written
or shall write. So I keep my name from you, dear reader, for there is
nothing you can give me that I want. I have learned my lesson in that
distant time and, having learned it, give you the things I stand for and
keep myself under a mask. These things urge me to my task. I do it that
I may give to you--my countrymen--the best fruitage of the great garden
of my youth and save it from the cold storage of unknowing history.

It is a bad thing to be under a heavy obligation to one's self of which,
thank God, I am now acquitted. I have known men who were their own worst
creditors. Everything they earned went swiftly to satisfy the demands
of Vanity or Pride or Appetite. I have seen them literally put out of
house and home, thrown neck and crop into the street, as it were, by one
or the other of these heartless creditors--each a grasping usurer with
unjust claims.

I remember that Rodney Barnes called for my chest and me that fine
morning in early June when I was to go back to the hills, my year's work
in school being ended. I elected to walk, and the schoolmaster went with
me five miles or more across the flats to the slope of the high country.
I felt very wise with that year's learning in my head. Doubtless the
best of it had come not in school. It had taken me close to the great
stage and in a way lifted the curtain. I was most attentive, knowing
that presently I should get my part.

"I've been thinking, Bart, o' your work in the last year," said the
schoolmaster as we walked. "Ye have studied six books and one--God help
ye! An' I think ye have got more out o' the one than