“After that we went away, feeling that the world could hold nothing more glorious.  It was five o’clock and we decided to start back.  We paid for Peggy’s dinner out of the dollar we had won on the race—­I say ‘we,’ for by that time we were welded into one organism—­and we still had a dollar and a quarter left.  ‘While ye’re about it, always go the whole hog!’ said gran’ther and we spent twenty minutes in laying out that money in trinkets for all the folks at home.  Then, dusty, penniless, laden with bundles, we bestowed our exhausted bodies and our uplifted hearts in the old buckboard, and turned Peg’s head toward the mountains.  We did not talk much during that drive, and though I thought at the time only of the carnival of joy we had left, I can now recall every detail of the trip—­how the sun sank behind Indian Mountain, a peak I had known before only through distant views; then, as we journeyed on, how the stars came out above Hemlock Mountain—­our own home mountain behind our house, and later, how the fireflies filled the darkening meadows along the river below us, so that we seemed to be floating between the steady stars of heaven and their dancing, twinkling reflection in the valley.

“Gran’ther’s dauntless spirit still surrounded me.  I put out of mind doubts of our reception at home, and lost myself in delightful ruminatings on the splendors of the day.  At first, every once in a while, gran’ther made a brief remark, such as, ’’Twas the hind-quarters of the sorrel I bet on.  He was the only one in the hull kit and bilin’ of ’em that his quarters didn’t fall away’; or, ’You needn’t tell me that them Siamese twins ain’t unpinned every night as separate as you and me!’ But later on, as the damp evening air began to bring on his asthma, he subsided into silence, only broken by great gasping coughs.

“These were heard by the anxious, heart-sick watchers at home, and, as old Peg stumbled wearily up the hill, father came running down to meet us.  ‘Where you be’n?’ he demanded, his face pale and stern in the light of his lantern.  ‘We be’n to the county fair!’ croaked gran’ther with a last flare of triumph, and fell over sideways against me.  Old Peg stopped short, hanging her head as if she, too, were at the limit of her strength.  I was frightfully tired myself, and frozen with terror of what father would say.  Gran’ther’s collapse was the last straw.  I began to cry loudly, but father ignored my distress with an indifference which cut me to the heart.  He lifted gran’ther out of the buckboard, carrying the unconscious little old body into the house without a glance backward at me.  But when I crawled down to the ground, sobbing and digging my fists into my eyes, I felt mother’s arms close around me.

“‘Oh, poor, naughty little Joey!’ she said.  ’Mother’s bad, dear little boy!’”

Professor Mallory stopped short.