“I’d like to, ever so much, Uncle Eli,” the boy answered, as he got up from the step and started for the big loft where he slept with the mountaineer’s two sons, “but, even if I don’t get a chance, I’ve learned a lot from you about the folk on the mountains and about the South generally.”

The mountaineer nodded a good-night as the boy disappeared.

“Now thar,” he said to his wife, who had been knitting stockings during the latter part of the conversation, and occasionally interjecting a word, “thar is a boy that is really achin’ to know things.  I wish Rube and Eph were more like him.”

“Nothin’ but hounds an’ vittles worries them,” the woman replied sharply, “but they an’t none like city boys, an’ I’d ruther have ’em the way they air than to come pesterin’ with questions like Hamilton does you.  I don’t set any sort o’ stock in it, an’ I don’t encourage him in sech nonsense.”

The big Kentuckian smiled, and filled his corn-cob leisurely as he turned the talk to other things.

Early the next morning, Hamilton and the oldest of the two boys started on their fourteen-mile ride to the station, where the lad was to take an afternoon train for Washington.  They had gone about three miles, when they came upon Bill Wilsh sitting on the stump of a tree by the roadside.

“I reckoned you-all would come along this way,” he said, “an’ I’ve be’n thinkin’ more’n more ‘bout Teacheh havin’ likely gone to the city, an’ not bein’ dead after all.  Yo’ goin’ to the city now?”

[Illustration:  Bill Wilsh’s home in the gully. (Courtesy of Doubleday, Page & Co.)]

[Illustration:  Bill Wilsh in the school. (Courtesy of Doubleday, Page & Co.)]

“I’m going to Washington, Bill,” Hamilton answered.

“Is that the city?”

“It’s one of them.”

“Do yo’ s’pose that’d be the city Teacheh went to?”

“I couldn’t say, Bill,” the lad replied, “there’s no way of knowing, but it’s likely enough.”

“I was thinkin’—­” the mountain boy began then he broke off suddenly.  “I’m mighty partial to whittlin’,” he continued irrelevantly.

“The best ever,” interjected Hamilton’s companion.  “Yo’ ought to have shown him some of your work, Bill.”

“I was allers hopin’ Teacheh would come back,” said the boy in his listless, passionless way, “an’ he seemed so fond o’ the school that I whittled a piece to give him when he showed up agin.  But now I reckon he an’t a-goin’ to come back.  Does you-all reckon he’ll come back from the city?”

Hamilton looked down at the lad, and wanted to cheer him up, but he could not see what would be likely to bring the schoolmaster back, and so he answered: 

“I’m afraid not, Bill.  But he might, you know.”