“I reckon not.  But I’d like him to know he a’nt fo’gotten in the mount’ns.  I want yo’ to tell him that thar a’nt be’n a week sence he went away that I an’t be’n down to the school an’ swep’ the floor an’ seen that his books was in the place he liked to have ’em be.  I wouldn’ want him to come back from his wanderin’, if he still is wanderin’, an’ think he was fo’gotten.  It an’t much, I know, to sweep a floor,” he added, looking up to Hamilton, “but yo’ tell him an’ he’ll understan’.  It’s about all that I kin do.  He’ll understan’ if yo’ tell him.”

Neither of the other boys spoke, and after a moment the mountain lad went on: 

“An’ when yo’ see him, give him this, an’ tell him it comes from Bill, his ‘tryin’ scholar.’  He used to call me that because, although I wasn’t learnin’ much, I was always tryin’.  An’ yo’ can tell him I’m tryin’ still.”

Reaching his hand into the bosom of his ragged shirt the boy pulled out a slab of wood four inches square.  It was carved as a bas-relief, showing the schoolhouse in the foreground in high relief, with the wooded hills beyond.

“That’s great!” exclaimed Hamilton.  “I don’t believe I ever saw better carving than that anywhere.”

A momentary gleam of pleasure flashed into the boy’s dull eyes, but he went on again in the same lifeless voice.

“Thar’s the schoolhouse jes’ as it was when he was here last, but it’s never looked the same to me sence.  I want yo’ to give this to him an’ show him, if yo’ will, that I whittled it with the door open, jes’ to show him we’re lookin’ for him back.”

“But supposing I shouldn’t meet him in the city?” queried Hamilton gently.  “Washington is a large place and there are many other cities.”

“I reckon you-all have mo’ chance o’ findin’ him thar than I have hyeh.  I reckon he an’t goin’ to come back hyeh, an’ then he’d never know that we an’t fo’gotten him, an’ he’d think we was ungrateful.  But yo’ll try an’ find him?”

Hamilton was conscious of a lump in his throat at the simple faithfulness of the mountain boy, and he said gently: 

“Very well, Bill, if you feel that way about it, of course I’ll try.  But you haven’t told me his name as yet.”

“I was thinkin’ o’ that,” the boy answered.  Then he took from his pocket a home-made gum-wood case, and opening it, took out a small piece of paper and handed it to Hamilton.

“Be keerful of it,” he said, “that paper tears mighty easy.”

Hamilton smoothed the paper out on the palm of his hand, and looked at it carefully.  It was a “copy,” merely of pothooks, done in lead pencil, the strokes wavering and of differing slopes, and the whole so smudged as scarcely to be recognizable But, down in the corner, written in ink, in a firm, bold hand, were the words, “Very Good, Gregory Sinclair.”

Hamilton copied the name into his notebook and, refolding the paper as carefully as possible in the same folds, he handed it to the barefooted boy standing on the road beside his horse’s head.