" So I walked on and on--horses were too
expensive--until I had wandered beyond railways, beyond
stage lines, to a land of "varmints" and rattlesnakes, where
the coming of a stranger was an event, and men lived and
died in the shadow of one blue hill.
Sprinkled over hill and dale lay cabins and farmhouses,
shut out from the world by the forests and the rolling hills
toward the east. There I found at last a little school. Josie told
me of it; she was a thin, homely girl of twenty, with a
dark-brown face and thick, hard hair. I had crossed the
stream at Watertown, and rested under the great willows; then
I had gone to the little cabin in the lot where Josie was resting
on her way to town. The gaunt farmer made me welcome,
and Josie, hearing my errand, told me anxiously that they
wanted a school over the hill; that but once since the war had
a teacher been there; that she herself longed to learn,--and
thus she ran on, talking fast and loud, with much earnestness
and energy.
Next morning I crossed the tall round hill, lingered to look
at the blue and yellow mountains stretching toward the Caro-
linas, then plunged into the wood, and came out at Josie's
home.
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