“Nothin’ but the railroad blastin’ down there in the valley,” she said with amusement.  “Ain’t you uset to that, yet?”

“No,” said he, “I ain’t—­an’ never will be.”

His tone was definitely bitter.  Never were the “sounds of progress more ungraciously received than there among the mountains by the folk who had, hedged in by their fastnesses, become almost a race apart, ignorant of the outside world’s progressions and distrustful and suspicious of them.

“Where you goin’, Madge?” he asked, plodding on beside the lurching ox.

“I ain’t tellin’,” she said briefly.  “But you can go part ways—­you can go fur as th’ pasture bars.”

“Why can’t I go as fur as you go?”

“Because,” said she, and laughed.  “I reckon maybe that th’ water’s started to warm up down in the pool, ain’t it?” she cried, and laughed again.

“Oh!” said he, a bit abashed, and evidently understanding.

They did not pursue the subject.

“What you got there?” he inquired, a few moments later, as they were approaching the old pasture.  He pointed to a package carefully wrapped in a clean apron, which she hugged beneath her arm.

“Spellin’ book,” said Madge, as, just before the bars she slid down from her perch upon the ox.  “I’m learnin’.”

His lip curled with the mountaineer’s contempt for books and all they have to teach.

“What you want to learn for?”

He had gently shouldered her aside as she had stooped to raise the bars back to position, and, with a certain crude gallantry, had done the task himself.

“Bleeged,” she said briefly, and then, standing with one brown and rounded arm upon the topmost rail, paused in consideration of an answer to his question.

The ox stopped, dully, close within the closed gap in the rough fence.  She went closer to him and patted his side kindly.  “Go on, old Buck,” she said.  “I’m through with you for quite a while.  Go on and have some fun or rest, whichever you like best.  You certainly can stand a lot of rest!  And here is new spring grass, Buck.  I should think you would be crazy to git at it.”

As if he understood, the old ox turned away, and, slowly, with careful searching for the newest and the tenderest of the forage blades which had pushed up to meet the pleasant sunshine, showed he was well fed at all times.

“What do I want to learn for?” the girl repeated, returning to Joe’s question.  “Why—­why—­I don’t know, exactly.  There’s a longin’ stirrin’ in me.

“While you was over yon” (she waved her hand in a broad sweep to indicate the mountain’s other side).  “I had to go down into town after—­after quite a lot of things.”  She looked at him somewhat furtively, as if she feared this statement might give rise to some unwelcome questioning, but it did not.  “I saw what queer things they are doin’—­th’ men that work there on that railroad buildin’.  Wonderful