“When I was to Bosting—” Miss Martha was to Boston only once in her life, but as her visit to that sacred city was the most important occurrence of her life, she did not hesitate to air her reminiscences of it frequently. “When I was to Bosting,” she was just saying, when, following the indication of Ralph’s eyes, she saw Bud coming up the hill near Squire Hawkins’s house. Bud looked red and sulky, and to Ralph’s and Miss Martha Hawkins’s polite recognitions he returned only a surly nod. They both saw that he was angry. Ralph was able to guess the meaning of his wrath.
Toward evening Ralph strolled through the Squire’s cornfield toward the woods. The memory of the walk with Hannah was heavy upon the heart of the young master, and there was comfort in the very miserableness of the cornstalks with their disheveled blades hanging like tattered banners and rattling discordantly in the rising wind. Wandering without purpose, Ralph followed the rows of stalks first one way and then the other in a zigzag line, turning a right angle every minute or two. At last he came out in a woods mostly of beech, and he pleased his melancholy fancy by kicking the dry and silky leaves before him in billows, while the soughing of the wind through the long, vibrant boughs and slender twigs of the beech forest seemed to put the world into the wailing minor key of his own despair.
What a fascination there is in a path come upon suddenly without a knowledge of its termination! Here was one running in easy, irregular curves through the wood, now turning gently to the right in order to avoid a stump, now swaying suddenly to the left to gain an easier descent at a steep place, and now turning wantonly to the one side or the other, as if from very caprice in the man who by idle steps unconsciously marked the line of the footpath at first. Ralph could not resist the impulse—who could?—to follow the path and find out its destination, and following it he came presently into a lonesome hollow, where a brook gurgled among the heaps of bare limestone rocks that filled its bed. Following the path still, he came upon a queer little cabin built of round logs, in the midst of a small garden-patch enclosed by a brush fence. The stick chimney, daubed with clay and topped with a barrel open at both ends, made this a typical cabin.
It flashed upon Ralph that this place must be Rocky Hollow, and that this was the house of old John Pearson, the one-legged basket-maker, and his rheumatic wife—the house that hospitably sheltered Shocky. Following his impulse, he knocked and was admitted, and was not a little surprised to find Miss Martha Hawkins there before him.
“You here, Miss Hawkins?” he said when he had returned Shocky’s greeting and shaken hands with the old couple.
“Bless you, yes,” said the old lady. “That blessed gyirl”—the old lady called her a girl by a sort of figure of speech perhaps—“that blessed gyirl’s the kindest creetur you ever saw—comes here every day, most, to cheer a body up with somethin’ or nuther.”
Miss Martha blushed, and said “she came because Rocky Hollow looked so much like a place she used to know at the East. Mr. and Mrs. Pearson were the kindest people. They reminded her of people she knew at the East. When she was to Bosting—”
Here the old basket-maker lifted his head from his work, and said: “Pshaw! that talk about kyindness” (he was a Kentuckian and said kyindness) “is all humbug. I wonder so smart a woman as you don’t know better. You come nearder to bein kyind than anybody I know; but, laws a me! we’re all selfish akordin’ to my tell.”
“You wasn’t selfish when you set up with my father most every night for two weeks,” said Shocky as he handed the old man a splint.
“Yes, I was, too!” This in a tone that made Ralph tremble. “Your father was a miserable Britisher. I’d fit redcoats, in the war of eighteen-twelve, and lost my leg by one of ’em stickin’ his dog-on’d bagonet right through it, that night at Lundy’s Lane; but my messmate killed him though which is a satisfaction to think on. And I didn’t like your father ’cause he was a Britisher. But ef he’d a died right here in this free country, ’though nobody to give him a drink of water, blamed ef I wouldn’t a been ashamed to set on the platform at a Fourth of July barbecue, and to hold up my wooden leg fer to make the boys cheer! That was the selfishest thing I ever done. We’re all selfish akordin’ to my tell.”
“You wasn’t selfish when you took me that night, you know,” and Shocky’s face beamed with gratitude.
“Yes, I war, too, you little sass-box! What did I take you fer? Hey? Bekase I didn’t like Pete Jones nor Bill Jones. They’re thieves, dog-on ’em!”
Ralph shivered a little. The horse with the white forefoot and white nose galloped before his eyes again.
“They’re a set of thieves. That’s what they air.”
“Please, Mr. Pearson, be careful. You’ll get into trouble, you know, by talking that way,”
