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She was asking Killis if he knew for whom he was named, and telling him she thought it must be for Achilles, a man who lived several thousand years ago, and was the greatest fighter of his time. There were unanimous demands to hear all about him, and she began telling the story of the Trojan War, this time to be followed with intense, almost breathless interest, and roars of refusal when she tried to leave off. As she related one fearful combat after another, she realized, with a shock, that what her babes wanted was not milk at all, but blood.

The next morning, while the boys were busy in the cottage before breakfast, Keats sauntered in, saying he had finished his job of cleaning the chicken-yard. Miss Loring went back to inspect it, found it anything but clean, and called up to Hen, who was sweeping the back walk, "Tell Keats to come back here and clean this yard better!" He had just passed the word along, "Hi, son, she says for you to come back and lick your calf over!" when a commotion arose in the cottage, and Nucky appeared in the back door, waving frantically for Miss Loring to come. Not knowing what battle, murder, or sudden death might be impending, she flew up the walk. The boys were all hanging out of the front door. Nucky seized her and shot her through them like a catapult. "Take a look at that 'ere man!" he said, breathlessly. "It's Asher Hardwick, from over on Powderhorn. He 's kilt forty men in war, and eleven in peace, and I'll bet he could whoop-out Achilles!" A gaunt, gray-haired, respectable-looking man was passing, on a well-fed nag. "Surely you must be mistaken," said Miss Loring; "why, he does n't look as if he would harm a fly!" "Would n't, less'n he was driv to it," replied Nucky; "but he 's been compelled to wipe out the whole tribe of Mohuns, over yander in Boyne, and a lot of others, too, that got theirselves mixed up in the war. More 'n twenty year' that war 's been a-going on. Asher he 's about the only Hardwick left now."

"But how could he kill eleven in peace?" she inquired.

"Kilt them just accidental,-they was witless folks that never knowed enough to keep out of the way when he was out after the Mohuns. Asher he 'd feel terrible bad about killing such as that."

The Saturday night following, when Miss Loring began again on the Trojan War, it was to be interrupted frequently by Nucky, with, "I can beat that with Asher Hardwick!" "Asher would n't have took no such sass from Agamemnon or nobody!" "Asher would have got the drop on Hector too long ago to talk about!" and then would follow exploits which did indeed sometimes beat Greeks and Trojans. And at the end of the evening, Nucky remarked, "If Achilles and Ajax and them had a-lived nowadays, they 'd a-got song-ballads made up about 'em, same as Asher Hardwick. There's four or five about him. Basil Beaumont, over on Trigger, he made up one, 'The Doom of the Mohuns,'-Blant and Ezry sings it."

"I know another," chimed in Absalom, taking down Geordie's little home-made banjo from the "fireboard," and starting up a long-drawn, indescribably doleful and bloody song, "Asher's Revengement," that fairly made the chills run up and down Miss Loring's spine.

Then, all of a sudden, she almost jumped out of her chair as the meaning of it all flashed upon her, and she realized the astonishing fact that she was set down in the very midst of a heroic age, a balladmaking age, an age rivaling in romance and daring the far-famed epoch of which she had been telling. "Why," she said, after her amazement had subsided a little, "Achilles and the others did have songballads made up about them,-the very stories I am relating to you now; and a blind poet, named Homer, gathered these together, and made them into one glorious song, which he went about singing from palace to palace, charming the souls of

men."

"Same as Basil Beaumont," replied Nucky. "He follows making song-ballads, and never does nary lick of work,- don't have to,-folks gives him his bed and victuals just to set in the chimley-corner and pick on his dulcimer and sing songballads. Gee, I aim to be a hero like Asher and Achilles, and kill as many as them, and git song-ballads made up about. me!"

In pursuance of this noble ambition, Nucky was almost never out of a fight during his moments of leisure for weeks after school began. All the boys were

combative enough; but Nucky was the most indefatigable. It seemed a necessity of his nature to measure and prove himself against all comers, whether among the cottage boys, or the hundred and more dayschool boys; and he never appeared really happy except when in a fight.

One thing weighed on his mind heavily for some time, and that was the acceptance by the other boys of the prowess of Killis Blair, on the mere strength of his having "fit the marshal that kilt his paw." This did not satisfy Nucky. He was impelled to doubt all things he himself had not proved. (The fact that Killis was a year older and a good deal larger than himself, was a trifle light as air to him.) So one Sunday morning in September, coming over from breakfast at the Big House, he suddenly slapped Killis in the mouth. With a bellow of surprised rage at the insult, Killis fell upon him, and an awful combat followed. Miss Loring was standing in the back cottage door, drinking in the beauty of the morning, and the Sabbath peace of the hills, when savage yells smote her ears. Following the sound she knew only too well, she hastened to the school yard. When she arrived, Nucky had just buried his teeth in Killis's arm, from which the blood was spurting, and Killis, blind with pain, was striking out wildly with his knife. Around the combatants the other boys formed a delighted, cheering circle, within which Philip danced madly around, shouting,

"Fight, dogs, you hain't no kin;

'F you kill one another, tain't no sin!"

The next instant, Nucky abandoned the hold with his teeth, and was flashing his own knife around Killis's throat. With a shinny-stick, Miss Loring knocked up one knife after the other, and kept death at bay until four of the grown-up boys arrived, and with difficulty separated the heroes and escorted them over to the trained nurse to have their wounds stanched and dressed.

Later, when the two (now bosom friends, and probably already plotting the joint attacks which later so greatly humiliated the day-scholars) were losing a whole week's playtime for fighting with weapons, and were solemnly talked to on the subject by Miss Loring, Killis pleaded

that a man had to revenge himself when insulted, while Nucky gave as his excuse that his great-great-grandpaw had fit the British, his grandpaw had fit the "Rebels," and his paw and Blant and Ezry had been fighting the Cheevers ever since he could recollect, and he himself was just bound to fight everything in sight,—that he 'd rather die than think there was a better man anywhere than himself.

He had no idea who the British or the "Rebels" were; but the reference gave Miss Loring an opening which she seized eagerly. She explained the difference between fighting just to be fighting, and fighting to save one's country, and gave them an extended talk on the subject of patriotism. And although their country, to them, meant their mountains, and they were astonished to hear that the great "level country" beyond was also theirs to love and fight for, their affections were hospitable, and they demanded that an enemy of the nation be produced at once.

Miss Loring also thought it as well to bring the Trojan War to an abrupt end (oh, the tears and lamentations over the death of Horse-Taming Hector!) and to read the boys stories of other heroes who won immortal glory by fighting, not one another, but dragons, giants, minotaurs, gorgons, and monsters of various kinds, the devourers and scourges of their countrymen.

These, too, were not without ill effects, chiefly in conjunction with the poetic imagination of Jason Wyatt. When Miss Loring went out one morning and found three poor barn cats writhing in their death struggles, while Jason galloped off on a stick horse brandishing a bat, she was not mollified by his explanation that he was Bellerophon and the cats the three heads of the Chimera; and when, two weeks later, hearing a great noise in the chicken-yard, she found eight chickens laid out dead, and Jason climbing down from the fence with his shirt-front still half full of "rocks," the statement that he was Thor slaying the Jotuns did not save him a good whipping.

Fortunately, it was the plebeian chickens, bought at ten cents apiece and kept only until killing time, that suffered; though there were signs in the smaller yard occupied by the Rhode Island Reds (two pullets and a young rooster sent up

by a friend from the Blue Grass, and treated with great respect as the founders of a new race) that a few rocks had come their way too.

To save them particularly, and to discourage cruelty in general, Miss Loring made a rule that day that any boy who threw a rock at any animal thereafter should receive a hard whipping at her hands, and if Jason did so again, he should have three. She anticipated no trouble with the older boys in this regard, well knowing that nothing on earth could be so antipathetic to their minds as the thought of "taking a whipping off a woman."

Hopefully as all the boys, and especially Nucky, searched for giants, dragons, and minotaurs in caves, coal-banks, rock-dens, and hollow logs during the Sunday walks thereafter, they found nothing worse than rattlesnakes, which were but a tame substitute, and an old story; but the value of drawing their minds to foes in the abstract was apparent in the gradual diminution of fighting, and in a rapid growth of the desire to defend and glorify their country rather than themselves. This change Miss Loring observed with joy. She believed that her boys, and other mountain boys like them, had great gifts to bring to their nation. Fearless, proud, honest, and truthful as they were, strengthened by a handto-hand struggle with nature from their very infancy, beginning at four or five years of age to shoulder such family responsibilities as hoeing corn on the steep mountainsides, clearing new-ground, grubbing, logging, hunting, and gathering the crop, they would be able to bring to the service of their country primal energy of body and spirit, indestructible valor, and minds untainted by the lust of wealth. Oftentimes she spoke to them of these things, and praised them for the fine traits she saw in them, and above all for their truthfulness, telling them this was the foremost virtue of the hero. Jason she was compelled to except from praise in this respect; but she did so in hope.

When the abatement in fighting gave Miss Loring some opportunity to become really acquainted with her boys, she discovered that Nucky had other strains in him beside the martial one. Of all the bright minds in her flock, his was the swiftest, the most lightning-like. He understood a thing almost before it was

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spoken. As he expressed it, “Learning comes handy to me." At study hour in the evenings, the others would go to him for help in their arithmetic and geography and language; and it was astonishing to hear his lucid explanations to boys a foot taller than himself. Also, there were in him certain delicate and deep reticences. He was in the school two months before he ever spoke of his mother, though Miss Loring had heard from others of her death more than a year before. One day when all the boys were bragging about their mothers, alive or dead, Nucky suddenly left the room. Hen reported later, "I tracked him to the hay-loft, and heared him a-layin' up there cryin' fit to kill for his maw."

Afterward, when he found that Miss Loring, too, was homesick for dear ones she would never see again in this world, he was able to talk of his mother to her; and the tie between them became very close and dear. His mind had from the first been a joy to her; and now a wild, shy, intense quality of his affectional nature captivated her more and more. was he who always sat at her right hand in the crowded semicircle before the fire when stories were told or read, having won the place in fair fight.

It

But if he brought her happiness, his daring spirit also caused her suffering in even greater measure. To look up from the garden and see him balancing on the ridge-pole of the Big House, with the steep, slippery roof slanting off dangerously beneath him; to watch him shin up to the tip of the tallest tree, and then, on his descent, jump from a limb thirty feet above the ground; to behold him hanging by his hands out over space, from the top ledge of the Raven Rocks, the highest point for miles around, were things not calculated to soothe her nerves. At all times he seemed under some inward compulsion of proving his valor, realizing his intention of being a hero. When the big "tide" came in Perilous in early November, sweeping away all the stable-lot fence. and much of the rock embankment, what was Miss Loring's terror, on hearing loud calls and cheers from the stable, to see Nucky out in the middle of the yellow, boiling flood, standing calmly on a swift log, which even as she glanced, shot around a curve and out of sight. Ten minutes of

agony followed; then Nucky reappeared, attended by every boy on the place, and wet only to his waist. "Gee, that was n't nothing," he deprecated; "I just jumped on her when she come anigh shore, and off ag'in down Perilous a piece. I've rid logs ever sence I was born. I hain't afraid!"

"Hain't Afraid got his neck broke yesterday," remarked Joab, quietly.

The first of December, in the shifting of jobs, Nucky was placed in charge of the chicken-yard, with particular instructions. to cherish the Rhode Island Reds. Three days later, the young rooster, hope of the future, disappeared from the face of the earth, leaving not so much as a feather to indicate the manner of his going. Nucky said he knew nothing; all the other boys declared their innocence; Jason was naturally suspected, but proved an alibi. The case was, and remained, one of entire mystery.

He

At any other time, the matter would have received more attention; but December was the busiest month of the year at the Settlement School. Preparations were already begun for the various entertainments and trees projected by "the women"; in addition, for Miss Loring and the boys, carols had to be practised, and hog-killing was looming. As if all this were insufficient, not a third of the month had passed before Miss Loring was called upon to bear a burden of anxiety concerning the health of Nucky Marrs. drooped, moped, grew pale, became indifferent to heroic exploits, whether in life or books, going off to bed once or twice in the very midst of a thrilling story. Miss Loring was sure it was malaria, and sent him over to Miss Shippen, the trained nurse; but, for once, her ministrations were of no avail. He fell into a settled melancholia, from which even the exciting events of hog-killing week failed to arouse him, developed a habit of sighing dolefully, and even lost his appetite. Miss Loring was very unhappy about him,-she feared a decline. The arrival of Christmas did not help matters, the tree and stockings and presents seeming only to confirm his gloom.

About noon on Christmas Day, after the celebration was over, the children left for their homes, to spend the holidays. All Miss Loring's boys went,-even Jason,

who had no home, was invited by Keats and Hen to spend a week with them. They had a younger brother, Hiram, just his age. As the boys set off by twos and threes for their long walks, Nucky looking as if he were going to his execution, Miss Loring felt strangely bereft and lonely; a little later Cleo rode off with a mysterious young man from "over on Wace" who had already paid her a visit or two, and had now brought a nag for her; and then the silence of death settled upon the cottage. As the afternoon dragged out its weary length, Miss Loring suffered unaccountable pangs. She had thought she would enjoy the rest, the quiet, the opportunity to read magazines and books piled away on her shelves for the past five months. But by the time night came, she would have given the world to hear the twelve pairs of brogans come thundering across the little bridge and into the cottage, the boyish voices raised in talk or play or even in fight. She felt absolutely unable to face the ten days and nights of loneliness ahead of her, and finally cried herself to sleep.

Her delight may therefore be imagined, when, as she started over to late breakfast the next morning, she saw Jason come climbing over the big gate. To her pleased inquiries as to the cause of his return, he would at first give no answer, but finally he murmured, with pretty bashfulness, "I was homesick for you.' "My darling child!" she cried, hugging him very hard. Then she gave him a quarter to go down to the village and buy a whole box of peppermint candy, and all that day and the next, Thursday and Friday, she sat on the floor and played marbles with him.

It has been told elsewhere how on Saturday, knowing that all her boys were invited to Killis Blair's that day to "see a good time, and drink and shoot all they wanted," she rode over to his home on Clinch, in the hope of averting the worst; and found things much better than might have been expected. Sunday morning when, with Jason behind her, she started back to the school, what was her surprise to hear from Philip and Nucky that they, too, would "go along." Philip said he was tired of rambling; Nucky gave no reason, but his haggard looks were eloquent enough, and she was most thankful to have him safe under her wing.

They returned by way of Caney Fork and Nancy's Perilous, passing the Salyer home on the latter stream. Keats was out by the branch chopping wood (he always laid in a large store of wood for Nervesty when he went home), and after they had passed the time of day, and refused his invitation to alight, he remarked, "I see you got Jason up behind you. Did he tell you how come him to leave a-Thursday?" "Yes," replied Miss Loring, proudly; "he was homesick for me." Keats measured Jason with his eye. "He 's the lyin' est little devil ever I seed," he said; "I'll tell you what made him leave. Him and Hiram fit from the time he stepped in the door, and all through supper, and off and on all night, and got up before day and started in ag'in; and Hiram he got him down once, and was a-ridin' him, and Jason he pult a table-knife out of his pocket and stobbed Hiram in the wrist with it, and Maw she took after him with a hickory, and he run away."

Miss Loring slid off Mandy, called for another hickory, sternly dragged down her "darling child," and gave him not only the punishment he had escaped on Thursday, but another on her own account; the bitterness of it being augmented for him by the fact that all the Salyers, including Hiram, came out to see it well done.

She made Jason walk the rest of the way, and took Nucky up behind her. It was distressing to see his dark and gloomy looks, and to hear the cavernous groans that now and then tore their way through him. Once he remarked, hollowly, "A liar is the scurviest, lowdownest, God-forsakeneşt varmint there are," to which Miss Loring responded, "Yes, that 's true; but Jason 's such a little fellow, he 'll get over it in time." Twice or thrice he seemed on the point of making other remarks, but they turned out to be only groans.

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When the school was reached in the afternoon, another surprise was in store, for there, in the cottage door, were Joab and Iry Atkins. "Too much stepmaw,' was Joab's laconic explanation. Miss Loring realized with a throb of joy and thanksgiving, that she had her five motherless boys back with her, and would be blessed with their society during the remainder of the holiday, instead of tormented with loneliness.

Later, the boy's dressed up in their Sunday clothes and new red ties, and Miss Loring in her Christmas dress, a cardinal crêpe-de-chine, matching the holly berries. and Christmas bells and new ties, and greatly admired by the boys, and they brought their supper over from the Big House and ate it in delightful coziness around the sitting-room table. Afterward as they all sat on the rag rug before the big, warm fire, talking, Jason with his head in her lap, Nucky and Iry leaning against her shoulders, and Philip and Joab as close as they conveniently could get, Miss Loring believed herself the happiest woman in the world. All her boys were dear to her, but these five needed her most. A mother to the motherless,-what greater blessedness could any woman ask? She knew that her feet were set in a large place, that her cup ran over, that she was anointed with the oil of gladness.

Of course at such a time their futures were predominant in her thoughts; and she painted in glowing colors the noble and heroic deeds they were some day going to do for their country and the world. As she talked, Nucky's head fell away from her shoulder, and into his hands. She told how Joab, as head of an agricultural college, Philip as builder of railroads and captain of industry, and Iry as physi-. cian and surgeon, were to do wonders, first for their own mountain country, and then for the world at large, and how Jason, when he once learned to distinguish between what he saw in his mind and what he saw with his eyes, might some day be a poet, and make beautiful songs about what the mountains and the waters and the skies and his own heart told him, and the deeds men did around him. "And Nucky," she continued, "thinks now that he will never be anything but a soldier, and fight all the time. But there are far worse enemies to be fought in this age than just men, or than dragons and giants, and I want him to be a statesman, and with trained mind, swift tongue, and fearless heart hunt out injustice and greed and cruelty and falsehood, and fight and destroy them until they no longer imperil and disgrace our country. This is the fighting we most need now, this is the heroism we must have if our nation is not to perish. And it is what you can do, Nucky, we all know that you have the

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