118
X. Tied to a Tree, 134
XI. Reading the News, 148
XII. Didn't Do Anything Heroic, 166
XIII. Might Wipe her Feet on Him, 183
XIV. An Old Man Preached, 198
XV. The Girl and the Churn, 207
XVI. The Appointment Comes, 220
XVII. Not to Tell Her a Lie, 234
XVIII. Down the Road, 252
XIX. Old Folks Left Alone, 263
XX. Met it in the Road, 271
XXI. Into the World beyond the Hills, 279
XXII. Came to Weep, 287
XXIII. A Trip Not Without Incident, 296
XXIV. Two Fruitful Witnesses, 303
XXIV. Too Proud to Beg, 312

ILLUSTRATIONS

REPRODUCED IN COLORS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS

PAGE

"She was the only mother I knowed," Frontispiece

"Them what hain't had trouble ain't had no cause to look fur
the Lord," 48

"Yes, I d-d-d-do say so, a-a-a-atter a f-f-f-fashion." 80

"Kotch 'em stealin' hosses, I reckon." 128

"Well," Margaret exclaimed, "I never was so surprised." 208

"Go on erway an' let me talk ter myse'f. You kain't talk." 240

"If you air the Jedge, I am sorter diserp'inted in you." 288

"Jedge, there ain't no better man than he is, an' for the
Lord's sake don't hang him." 304

"THE STARBUCKS."

[From the Drama of the Same Name.]

CHAPTER I.

THE PEOPLE OF THE HILLS.

In every age of the world people who live close to nature have, by the
more cultivated, been classed as peculiar. An ignorant nation is brutal,
but an uneducated community in the midst of an enlightened nation is
quaint, unconsciously softened by the cultivation and refinement of
institutions that lie far away. In such communities live poets with
lyres attuned to drollery. Moved by the grandeurs of nature, the
sunrise, the sunset, the storm among the mountains, the tiller of the
gullied hill-side field is