“Davy, ye’ll not forget us when ye’re great, I know ye’ll not.  Tis not in ye.”

She stood back and smiled at me through her tears.  The light of heaven was in that smile, and I have dreamed of it even since age has crept upon me.  Truly, God sets his own mark on the pure in heart, on the unselfish.

I glanced for the last time around the rude cabin, every timber of which was dedicated to our sacrifices and our love:  the fireplace with its rough stones, on the pegs the quaint butternut garments which Polly Ann had stitched, the baby in his bark cradle, the rough bedstead and the little trundle pushed under it,—­and the very homely odor of the place is dear to me yet.  Despite the rigors and the dangers of my life here, should I ever again find such happiness and peace in the world?  The children clung to my knees; and with a “God bless ye, Davy, and come back to us,” Tom squeezed my hand until I winced with pain.  I leaped on the mare, and with blinded eyes rode down the familiar trail, past the mill, to Harrodsburg.

There Mr. Neville Colfax was waiting to take me across the mountains.

There is a story in every man’s life, like the kernel in the shell of a hickory nut.  I am ill acquainted with the arts of a biographer, but I seek to give in these pages little of the shell and the whole of the kernel of mine.  ’Twould be unwise and tiresome to recount the journey over the bare mountains with my new friend and benefactor.  He was a strange gentleman, now jolly enough to make me shake with laughter and forget the sorrow of my parting, now moody for a night and a day; now he was all sweetness, now all fire; now he was abstemious, now self-indulgent and prodigal.  He had a will like flint, and under it a soft heart.  Cross his moods, and he hated you.  I never thought to cross them, therefore he called me Davy, and his friendliness grew with our journey.  His anger turned against rocks and rivers, landlords and emigrants, but never against me.  And for this I was silently thankful.

And how had he come to take me over the mountains, and to put me in the way of studying law?  Mindful of the kernel of my story, I have shortened the chapter to tell you out of the proper place.  Major Colfax had made Tom and me sup with himself and Colonel Clark at the inn in Danville.  And so pleased had the Major professed himself with my story of having outwitted his agent, that he must needs have more of my adventures.  Colonel Clark gave him some, and Tom,—­his tongue loosed by the toddy,—­others.  And the Colonel added to the debt I owed him by suggesting that Major Colfax take me to Virginia and recommend me to a lawyer there.

“Nay,” cried the Major, “I will do more.  I like the lad, for he is modest despite the way you have paraded him.  I have an uncle in Richmond, Judge Wentworth, to whom I will take him in person.  And when the Judge has done with him, if he is not flayed and tattooed with Blackstone, you may flay and tattoo me.”