EARLY on Monday morning an old man driving a gray mare in a two-wheeled cart came slowly up the road to the schoolhouse. A lank colt followed the mare. The cart was very old, no vestige of paint remained on it, one of the shafts was wrapped with wire, the bottom of the cart, made of small slats, was loose. The man was heavy and the cart creaked. He drove slowly, his big body filling the seat on which for comfort he had placed a folded bedquilt.
He stopped in the road below the schoolhouse and got slowly out of the creaking cart.
One of his legs was swollen with scrofula, and stiff to the knee. He moved it with difficulty. He left the mare standing in the road, the colt beside her, and came through the grove to the school-house door. The stiff leg gave his heavy body an awkward swing. He supported himself with a stout stick.
When he came finally to the school-house, he sat down on the step before the door. He had evidently moved faster than he was accustomed to do, and he remained for a moment breathing heavily, his big bulk covering the step. Then he got a memorandum hook and a pencil out of his pocket. The memorandum book was one of those cheap advertisements of patent medicine which are given away at the country store. It contained a few pages blank on one side and printed with virtues of the medicine on the other. The pencil was a little more pretentious than the ordinary one. It consisted of a tin case containing a long, thin core of purple lead, the end of which could be made to protrude for writing by pressing the thumb on the opposite end of the case.
The old man turned the leaves of the memorandum book, wetting his forefinger in his mouth, until he found a blank page. Then he laid the book on his knee, pressed the case of the pencil, touched the tip of the lead to his tongue, and laboriously wrote.
“This schoolhouse is closed, by order of P. Hamrick, Trustee.”
He tore the leaf out, rose and pinned it to the door.
It was some distance through the grove of ancient trees to the road, and he started to return. In spite of his bulk and his stiff leg he endeavored to hurry. He thrust his stout stick out before him on the path, and swung forward, his weight forcing the point of the stick into the earth. In order that he might not fall, and to find each time a safe place for the stick, he moved with his eyes on the ground.
Presently the end of the stick slipped on a pebble, and he lurched forward. He saved himself from falling by grasping the crook, of the stick with both hands, tottered a moment, then he regained his balance and looked up.
The School-teacher stood before him.
The old man remained holding to the stick, breathing with difficulty. The School-teacher was some distance away, motionless in the path. He had evidently seen the man coming from the schoolhouse door, and had stopped there in the path to observe him.
The School-teacher spoke.
“Have you been to the schoolhouse?” he said.
“Yes,” replied the man, “I've—I've been out to the schoolhouse.”
“To see me?” said the School-teacher. “Well, no,” replied the man, “not exactly to see you.”
“To see the school?”
“Well, no, not exactly to see the school.” Then he added, “I'm the trustee. I've been looking over the schoolhouse. I think I'll be goin' on.”
“Why do you hurry?” said the Schoolteacher.
“I must be gettin' home,” said the old man.
He reached forward with his stick, but again the point of it slipped and he nearly fell.
The School-teacher looked past the man toward the schoolhouse.
“What is that on the door?” he said. The old man turned around. The leaf from the memorandum book, fastened with the pin, fluttered on the door, as though 't were a living thing struggling to free itself.
“That's a piece of paper,” said the old man.
“Who put it there?”
“I did.”
“What for?”
“It's a kind of notice.”
“A notice to me?”
“A notice about the schoolhouse.”
“Is there anything wrong with the schoolhouse?”
“Well,” said the old man, “I don't think it's just exactly safe.”
“Not safe for the children?”
“Well, no, it mightn't he safe for the children.”
“What is wrong with the schoolhouse?” said the School-teacher.
The old man began to talk. “Well,” he said, “it's got a good roof. Old Dix put that roof on. Every one of the clapboards is planed with a drawin' knife. An' the weatherboardin' is good. It was seasoned weatherboardin'. But the floor might be bad.”
“I have mended the floor,” replied the School-teacher.
“It ain't so much the floor,” continued the old man. “It's the sills. The sills might be rotten.”
“I have examined the sills,” replied the School-teacher. “The sills are sound.”
“Well,” said the old man, “failin' weather's comin' on. I think the school had better stop anyway.”
He turned a little and put his stick out on the path into the leaves as though he would go down the hill a shorter way to the road.
The School-teacher read his intent in the moving of the cane.
“You would better stay in the path,” he said. “If you get out of the path you will fall.”
The old man turned back into the path before the School-teacher.
There was come now a certain dogged expression into his face.
“If you want to know,” he said, “there's been some complaint about you.”
“Who has complained of me?” said the School-teacher.
“Good men have complained.”
“What good men?”
“Why, men as good as the minister. Why, men as good as the doctor.”
Then he looked out sharp at the Schoolteacher.
“Ain't that hussy, Yaller Mag, up there with you at Nicholas Parks' house?” The School-teacher regarded the old man standing before him.
“Do you think this woman ought to be sent away?”
“Yes, I do,” replied the old man.
“Then some one ought to tell her to go.”
“Yes, they ought.”
“It's a difficult thing to do,” said the School-teacher.
“To find some one to tell her?”
“Yes,” said the School-teacher, “that is it, to find some one to tell her.”
“If that's all,” said the old man, “I'm goin' home by Nicholas Park's house, that's my shortest way. I'll stop an' tell her myself.”
“But have you thought how difficult it will be to tell her?” inquired the Schoolteacher.
“What's the trouble about tellin' her?”
“Well,” replied the School-teacher, his eyes resting on the old man's swollen scrofuletic leg, “the trouble is that the one who goes to tell her ought to be better than she is. He ought, himself, to have lived a clean life.... Perhaps you have, perhaps you can tell her.”
The old man thought that the Schoolteacher saw something lying on the ground, for he stooped over and his finger moved in the dust of the path. And while he remained thus, the old man hurried along to the road. The mare stood facing in the direction of the way over the mountain by Nicholas Parks' house.
The old man took her by the bridle and turned her around in the road.
Then he climbed slowly into the creaking cart. He looked back when he had got his big bulk on the folded bedquilt. The School-teacher was standing upright where he had passed him in the path. The old man put his hand on the corner of the seat and turned heavily about.
“There's another thing,” he said. “I'd like to know why you're always carryin' that bastard brat around with you.”
Then he drove away, but not on the road that crossed the mountain by Nicholas Park's house.
ALL day long the little boy was with the School-teacher. The child and the dog watched for the man to come out of the forest in the morning. When the dog barked, the little boy would say:
“Nim, see Teacher.”
The woman standing before the door watched for the three of them to come out of the forest in the evening. She listened for the laughter, the voices, the barking of the dog. The sense of perfect understanding among the three of them was to her a perpetual wonder. The child had only a few words, the dog had none. How could the man know so well, what they meant? It was a wonder that she turned about, and at last, out of the deeps of her own feelings, she got an answer that she held to.
“If you love a thing enough, it's goin' to understand you.”
The relation of the School-teacher to this tiniest child was also that of his relation to every other one. The sense of it spread throughout the school. This school became a family. What the cheerless home withheld, it gave. No child could have told one what that was.
The teacher understood him, would have been the answer.
The School-teacher required no built-up explanations, he required no justification of one's act by the unfamiliar standards of another, he required no trick, no artifice, no pretending, to get on with.
To the question, “What is he like?” a little boy had answered, “Why, just like me.”
For some time there had been a secret in the school.
The School-teacher had talked with every child apart. The talk had been confidential. The School-teacher had spoken with each one, even the tiniest, as with an equal. He had spoken with him from day to day as the occasion arose. It was the way of this secret to make the child with whom he talked for a time unhappy. But as the School-teacher continued each day to strengthen him, to show him how much he depended on him, and to blow on the embers of his courage, he came at length to carry the secret with equanimity.
On Thursday evening this secret became the common property of all. The School-teacher was going away! There would be no more school!
On this afternoon the School-teacher had again talked with each child apart, told him that the time of which he had spoken had now come, and called upon him for the evidence of his courage. But, in spite of all, when the hour arrived, the school broke down. It left the little benches and gathered around the Schoolteacher. For a moment the Schoolteacher hesitated, before the group of wet faces, then, one by one, he took each child up in his arms, carried him to the window and told him something. Something which he had not told him before. No one, outside of the school, knew exactly what it was. But each child coming from the School-teacher's arms was strengthened, and set out for his home, the tears drying on his sturdy little face. An idea of what this something was, afterwards arose. A little boy had said, “Everybody's a-goin' to live at the School-teacher's house.” But he was in the extremity of illness when he said it, and they thought he spoke in delirium.
It, was mid-afternoon when the Schoolteacher left the schoolhouse. He was accompanied by the two children, Martha and David. The dog Jim went before him and he carried the tiny boy on his shoulder. They went along the road to the river, crossed on the stones and ascended the mountain. The little boy fell asleep, his arms around the Schoolteacher's neck.
The two children walked beside the man.
For the most part they were silent. Finally they came to the little clearing. The children stopped in the road, and the man went up onto the cabin porch, the little sleeping boy in his arms. The woman at work in the kitchen, hearing the footsteps, came out to the door. When she saw who it was, she was surprised.
“School's out early to-day,” she said. “Yes,” replied the School-teacher. “What's the matter?”
“It's the last day of the school.”
“Won't there be any more school?”
“No.”
The woman's lips trembled. “Then, then...” she said, and she began to cry.
“Mary,” said the School-teacher, “have you forgotten what I told you?”
The woman sobbed,
“But it's come so soon.”
Then she looked at the little boy sleeping in the School-teacher's arms and the tears streamed down her face.
“Now, what'll I do?” she said. “Now, what'll I do? He'll set there by the door, him an' Jim, an' he'll look for you every morning, an' whenever Jim barks he'll say 'Nim see Teacher,' but he won't never see you.”
“Yes,” replied the School-teacher, “he will see me again.”
“Then you won't be so awful far away?”
“I shall never be very far away from him.”
Then he put the sleeping child into the woman's arms.
“Don't wake him,” he said, “and don't cry. Remember, Mary, that if he should go with me, then he could not stay with you.”
He went down the road, and with the two children beside him, passed on along the path. They went by the spring, with its keg sunk in the earth, and up the mountain to Nicholas Parks' house. There, in the road, they found the woman with the yellow hair, feeding the chickens, a measure of corn in her apron.
“You're back early,” she said.
“It's the last day of the school,” replied the School-teacher.
The woman's whole body was convulsed. The corn spilled out of her apron. Then she fled along the road, and up the path to the house. At the door she stopped, turned about, and then huddled down by the steps, her apron over her head.
The School-teacher bade the children await him, then he went up the path. He passed by the woman and entered the house. Within the house, he went over to the table by the wall, on which lay a little, worn, broken toy, that had once been a wooden horse, a top whittled out of a spool, a brass ring with its cotton ribbon, a Harlow knife, and little bunches of wild flowers. These he took up, one by one, and put into the bosom of his coat. Then he came out and closed the door. As he passed, the woman put out her hand and touched him. And he stopped. For a moment he stood looking down at the woman sobbing at his feet, the apron over her heed. Then he spoke.
“Margaret,” he said, “is this how you will keep your promise to me?”
Then he went down the path, and, accompanied by the two children, followed the road along the ridge to the little path descending the mountain toward the mill. As the School-teacher walked he endeavored to strengthen and encourage the two children. He bade them remember what he had said, and not to cry. They managed not to cry when he left them at the point where the path entered the road below. But when he was gone out of their sight and hearing, in the direction of the schoolhouse, they held to each other and wept.
They stood for a long time, there, in tears, holding to one another. Then they heard sounds approaching and hid themselves. Two men rode past in the direction of the schoolhouse. One of them carried a rifle across the saddle before him.
A great fear fell on the two children and they followed at a distance. They saw the two men dismount before the school-house, knock on the door and enter. After a while they came out with the Schoolteacher.
They got on their horses and, with the School-teacher walking between them, set out along the road in the direction of the town.
THE several influences moving against the School-teacher, having formed a conjunction, at last determined to act.
On Wednesday night, in the church at the county seat, two persons attended the minister's mid-weekly meeting, who were not members of the congregation. These two persons, the sheriff and the doctor, sat on the last bench nearest the door. When the service was concluded and the congregation withdrew, these two persons remained with the minister. The three of them moved up to the table before the altar, where there was a small oil lamp.
They remained for a long time in conference around this table.
It seemed that the minister's efforts to get rid of the School-teacher by prevailing on the trustee to close the schoolhouse, had not succeeded.
The school went on in spite of the notice.
And now some more effective measures must be found. The sheriff, when the minister informed him of the occupancy of Nicholas Parks' estate by this stranger, had caused a proceeding to be instituted in the circuit court, and had obtained an order restraining any one from entering on the lands of Nicholas Parks until the right of the state thereto could be determined. This order had been posted on the door of Nicholas Parks' house. But this order, like the one on the door of the schoolhouse, the stranger had not regarded.
It was evident that a firmer step must be taken.
Two plans were available. As the School-teacher had continued to remain on Nicholas Parks' lands after the restraining order had been posted on the door, the sheriff could apply to the circuit judge for aruleand cause him to be brought before the court and imprisoned for contempt. The second plan was for the doctor to go before a justice of the peace and take out a warrant against the School-teacher charging him with practicing medicine without a license.
These two plans were now under discussion in the empty, dimly lighted church.
The little hand oil lamps had been put out except one on a wooden bracket by the door, and the one smoking on the table before the altar. The silence, the empty church, or something in the atmosphere of the place, caused the men to draw together and to discuss the matter in undertones.
The minister sat with his back to the altar.
On the bench beside him was his hat containing the money which he had collected from the congregation at the close of the service. On either side were the doctor and the sheriff. The latter's big hump now prominent as he leaned over the table. The minister led the discussion, and they remained for some time thus, in conference. The minister's defective eye batting, the doctor's crooked arm on the table, and the sheriff's back throwing its humped shadow against the wall.
Finally it was determined that the sheriff should go before the court on Thursday and obtain theruleupon which the School-teacher could be arrested and brought down out of the mountain. At the same time the doctor should take out his warrant before the justice of the peace, so it might be available in case the circuit judge should not commit the Schoolteacher upon the proceeding for contempt.
This plan having been settled upon, it became necessary to consider how the arrest should be made.
The sheriff could send his deputy, who served legal papers in the county, but the deputy had never seen the School-teacher and did not know him. And, besides this, if the School-teacher resisted, and those about him should come to his support, there might be considerable trouble to take him. One man conducting a prisoner through the mountains in the night might easily be compelled to release him. Moreover, the deputy, knowing the danger of making an arrest in the mountain districts, could not be got to go up alone.
A discussion of who should be found to assist the deputy then arose. No one could be thought of except Jonas Black, a worthless hanger-on about the village. This man was the son of Jerry Black, whose eye the School-teacher had cured.
He had been the sheriff's driver on the occasion of that official's interview with the School-teacher. He was familiar with the mountains, and it was thought less likely to be resisted, since he was one of the mountain people. He knew the School-teacher. It was said that for a time he had hung about him, hoping to be employed to go from house to house and collect the School-teacher's salary, until he discovered to his astonishment, that this stranger was charging nothing for his service.
The sheriff rose and went out into the village to seek this man, while the others awaited his return. The sheriff was not gone very long. He presently entered the church with another. This man had a curious deep red birthmark covering the entire side of his face. He came up the church aisle behind the sheriff, stepping softly and glancing furtively about him. He slipped into a seat before the table facing the altar, and remained there shifting his hat in his lingers.
The sheriff took his place at the table.
“I found Jonas,” he said.
The minister looked across the table at the man.
“Will you go?” he inquired.
“Yes, I'll go,” replied the man, “if I git paid enough for it.”
“How much do you want?” said the minister.
“Well,” replied the man, “it ought to be worth about five dollars.”
The three men at the table protested.
The sum was excessive. The sheriff would provide a horse. The journey would not take longer than one night. Besides, there was no way by which the fees of a deputy, for such service, could be made to aggregate that sum. The man persisted, and, while the sheriff considered how the sum allowed under the law could be augmented, the minister bargained. The man finally reduced his demand to three dollars. And the sheriff, seeing now a plan by which an additional charge could be officially added, said:
“There are a couple of bad characters in the jail, held to the grand jury for breaking into a store. They may try to give me some trouble. Now, if you would watch the jail for a few nights, I might manage to get that fee for you.”
“Well,” replied the man, “I'd sorter keep an eye on the jail for a night or two. I wouldn't mind doin' that. But I won't wait for my money. I won't take it in costs.”
“How soon will you want it?” inquired the sheriff.
“Right now,” said the man.
“I couldn't give it to you to-night,” replied the sheriff.
The man got up.
“Then I won't go,” he said.
An idea occurred to the minister. He turned around, picked up his hat, containing the recent collection, and placed it on the table. He whispered a moment to the others, then he spoke to the man.
“I'll pay you the money,” he said.
He began to count it out on the table. The money from the collection was in small silver coins and he selected the largest of them. He leaned over the table, his fingers in the hat, his defective eye close to the lamp.
And the man standing before the altar, one half of his face in the shadow, one half discolored by the crimson birthmark dimly in the light, received the money. Two dollars and sixty cents in ten-cent pieces, three five-cent pieces, and one twenty-five cent piece.
THEY took the School-teacher into the courthouse early in the morning.
The county seat of this mountain county was nothing more than a village, lying in the foothills. The courthouse stood in a grove of oak trees, in the middle of the village. It was a two-story structure. On the ground floor was the jail in the custody of the sheriff.
The second floor was the courthouse.
This second story was entered exclusively from without. Broad stone steps led up to a portico, on which stood round, plaster-covered pillars supporting the projecting roof. On either side, entering between these pillars, were the offices of the county and circuit clerks. Beyond was the court room filled with benches. A portion of this room at the farther end was separated from the benches by a railing. Within it were chairs and two tables for attorneys, a desk for the clerk, and a raised platform, ascended by steps on either side, for the judge.
It was the custom of the judges traveling on these mountain circuits to open court as early as eight o'clock in the morning, and before that, if they were come into the court room, to hear informally motions and the like.
When they brought the School-teacher into the courthouse, the sheriff, the doctor, the minister, the old trustee who had ridden down out of the mountains in his cart, were already there.
The deputy and Jonas led the Schoolteacher inside the railing. Then they sat down. The School-teacher remained standing.
The hearing before the circuit judge followed the informal custom of these mountain circuits.
The School-teacher made no defense.
He stood before the bench. The early sunlight of the morning, entering through the high windows, fell on his face, on his soft brown hair, on his deep gray-blue eyes, on his clothing covered with the dust of the road.
The judge heard the oral evidence in open court, He inquired into the service of the restraining order, and the prisoner's subsequent disregard of it. But he was not convinced. The prisoner's conduct seemed inconsistent with an intent to resist the State's title to these lands. Moreover, the silence, the calm demeanor, the strange personality of the prisoner, profoundly impressed him. He felt that some ulterior motive lay behind the cover of this accusation.
At this moment a woman appeared at the door of the courthouse and sent in a note to the judge. This note was sealed in an envelope and addressed in a fine hand. The judge opened it at once. When he had read it, he sat for some time looking down at the prisoner. He did not believe in dreams; but the insistence of his wife impressed him.
He turned to the sheriff, and inquired if there was a man in the courtroom who knew anything about the prisoner.
The sheriff indicated the others near him.
“Yes, Your Honor,” he replied, “the minister, the school trustee of that district, and the doctor here, all know about him. He seems to have made himself generally troublesome to the community. I believe the justice of the peace had issued a warrant against him for practicing medicine without a license.”
When the circuit judge heard of this action of the justice, he ordered the School-teacher to be taken before that official. He said that if the justice of the peace has issued a warrant antedating therule, he would yield to him the custody of the prisoner.
They took the School-teacher out of the courthouse and across the village street to the office of the justice of the peace.
The justice was greatly pleased when the deputy and Jonas came in with the prisoner. A good many stories had drifted down from the mountains to him concerning the miraculous cures which this man had effected, and he was anxious to see him. He removed his spectacles, put them carefully into a tin case, set his feet on the rounds of a chair and, after having thus made himself comfortable, he requested the School-teacher to explain to him in detail, exactly how he had accomplished the marvels of which he had heard.
The School-teacher did not reply.
He remained standing as he had stood before the circuit judge. His head lifted. The features of his face unmoving. His deep gray-blue eyes tilled with a tranquil, melancholy light.
When the justice of the peace saw that his curiosity was not likely to be gratified, he, at once, sent the prisoner back to the circuit judge. He took this act of the judge to be a delicate courtesy, a tender regard for the jurisdictional rights of an inferior tribunal, and he was not to be outdone. In several instances the circuit judge had recently curtailed his jurisdiction, and he had been smarting under it. This act was a friendly overture, and he hastened to evidence his appreciation of it.
He returned the prisoner, saying that as his warrant had not been served, his jurisdiction had not attached, and the prisoner was exclusively in the custody of the circuit court. Moreover, that he would hold his warrant in abeyance until the circuit court had disposed of the case.
When the School-teacher came again before the circuit judge, that official no longer hesitated to indicate his opinion. He said that the prisoner did not seem disposed to contest the state's title to these lands, that he appeared to have taken up his residence in Nicholas Parks' house anterior to the date of the order, and upon some verbal direction of the decedent; that while there was here perhaps a technical contempt, he was not certain that it was intended, and consequently that he was disposed to dismiss the prisoner.
The minister, the sheriff, the doctor, the old school trustee, under this informal procedure, came forward with a protest. They said that the School-teacher was a person dangerous to the community; that he had set himself against the authority of the state in disregarding the order of the court; that he had set himself against the authority of the county by disregarding the notice placed on the schoolhouse door; that he had openly violated the law in practicing medicine without a license; that he harbored immoral persons, and encouraged the children in acts of irreverence.
The judge endeavored to compromise with this opposition. He said that he would reprimand the prisoner, suspend sentence and release him on his own recognizance.
The general protest now took on a definite form. The minister spoke for the others. He was little accustomed to the diplomacy of the advocate and he thinly disguised the threat that was the tenor of this speech. He said that one in the position of a circuit judge ought to sustain the better elements of the community in their efforts to get rid of an undesirable person; that the will of the people was not lightly to be disregarded; that the object of making offices elective was that one who refused to consider what the people desired might be replaced by another; and the like.
The judge came up presently for reelection. It was notice to him that the powerful elements which these protesting persons represented would hold him to account. The strength of his political party lay in these mountain counties. He required the support of these elements. And he especially feared a sectarian sentiment against him. He knew the danger of such a sentiment; and how little, once on its way, explanations would avail. This covert threat angered the judge, but he feared to resist it. He dipped his pen into the inkpot before him, and wrote an order committing the prisoner to the county jail. Then he handed it down to the sheriff.
The persons standing about the sheriff drew near to him and read the order. The minister and the school trustee objected to something in the body of the writing, and the sheriff went with them to the judge.
They pointed out that the order directed the commitment of the “Schoolteacher of Hickory Mountain District,” that this term was incorrect, that the prisoner had not been employed by the trustees, that he was not the School-teacher of Hickory Mountain District, and that the order ought not so to designate him.
But the judge, smarting under the lash that had been laid on him, was in no mood to receive a further dictation.
He refused to change what he had written.
THE several persons who had forced the judge to commit the School-teacher to the county jail, having gone down from the courthouse, remained throughout the day in conference. It was evident that the circuit judge had acted against his own inclination, and that he could not be depended upon to hold the prisoner in custody. Some other method for ridding the community of this undesirable person must be found. Finally, after long reflection, they hit upon a plan.
Night descended.
In the village saloon, beyond the grove of oak trees behind the courthouse, the man who had received the money from the minister sat playing at cards. A rifle stood in the corner behind him. From time to time he arose, took up the rifle and went to the door. Keeping thus, in his fashion, an agreement which the sheriff had forgotten.
The night advanced.
At twelve o'clock the sheriff went down into the jail. He carefully unfastened the door opening into the grove of oak trees. Then he came along the corridor to the one iron cage that the jail contained. The door to this cage he likewise carefully unlocked. On a bedtick filled with straw, two men, convicted of larceny, were apparently asleep beside this door. On a bench against the wall behind them sat the School-teacher. His hat with its little crimson feather lay beside him. He sat unmoving, looking at something in his hand. When he observed the sheriff, he put the thing which he held in his hand back into the bosom of his coat. It was the broken toy horse which the little boy had given him. The sheriff beckoned with his finger.
The School-teacher lifted his head and looked at the man, but he did not move from his place against the wall.
The sheriff stepped delicately past the men, whom he believed to be asleep, and approached the School-teacher.
“The door's open,” he said, “you can get out of the county before 't's daylight.”
The School-teacher did not reply, and the sheriff went noiselessly out. Presently the two men got up from their pretended sleep and slipped out of the cage. The School-teacher rose and spoke to them. But they crept down the corridor. He followed. He came upon them as they opened the door leading out of the jail into the grove, stepped between them in the door and thrust them back. The act saved the men's lives, but it cost the School-teacher his own.
There was the flash of a rifle from the saloon beyond the oak trees, and the School-teacher fell forward, his arms outstretched.
In the evening some women and children from the mountains came to the circuit judge and asked him for the body of the School-teacher. He gave it to them, and at night they took it away.
An ox, led by a little boy, bore the body, and women walking beside it supported it with their hands.
They traveled back into the mountains.
And at daybreak they laid the body in a grave which they had made between the two great hickories on the ridge beyond Nicholas Parks' house. They lined the grave with bright-colored leaves, and wrapped the body in that piece of linen which the School-teacher had bade the miller keep for him until he should need it. The hands of women and children filled the grave with earth. Then they went away down the mountain, toward the mill, leaving a woman crouched beside the grave. Her apron covering her yellow hail. Her body rocking.
It was morning.
They went down the mountain, the boy and the ox, the little girl, the two remaining women—one of them carrying a tiny sleeping boy wrapped in a shawl, a dog beside her.
On a bench of the mountain below, where a tree, uprooted by the wind, lay with its broken trunk pointing toward the ridge, they stopped and looked back. As they looked, the sun arose, a disc of gold between the two great hickories.
With a wild harking, the dog leaped onto the fallen trunk, ran out to the projecting end of it, and stood there looking toward the sun.
The tiny boy moved 'n his mother's arms.
“Nim see Teacher,” he said.