The thought that he might some day be able to read the books that George had pored over, and that, possibly, some time in the far future he might be fitted to preach the gospel George had proclaimed, aroused all her grandmotherly pride. Some fragment of a half-forgotten sermon floated through her mind as she looked on the ragged little fellow standing before her.
"The mantle of the prophet 'Lijah done fell on his servant 'Lisha," she muttered under her breath. "What if the mantle of Gawge Chadwick have been left to my poah Ellen's boy, 'long with them books?"
John Jay was balancing himself on one foot, while he drew the toes of the other along a crack in the floor between the puncheons, anxiously awaiting her decision. Not knowing what was passing through her mind, he was not prepared for the abrupt change in both her speech and manner. He almost lost his balance when she suddenly gave her consent; but, regaining it quickly, he tumbled through the door, giving vent to his delight in a series of whoops that made Mammy's head ring, and brought her to the door, scolding crossly.
A few minutes later, a dusky little figure crept through the gloaming, and rustled softly through the leaves lying on the path. Resting his arms on the fence, he looked across the dim fields to the darkly outlined tree-tops of the hill beyond.
"I wondah if he knows that I'm keepin' my promise," he whispered. "I wondah if he knows I'm tryin' to follow him."
Over the churchyard hill the new moon swung its slender crescent of light, and into its silvery wake there trembled out of the darkness a shining star.
The roadside ditches are covered with ice, these cold winter mornings. The ruts in the muddy pike are frozen as hard as stone. John Jay shuffles along in his big shoes on his way to school, out at the toes and out at his elbows; but there is a broad smile all over his bright little face. Wherever he can find a strip of ice to slide across, he goes with a rush and a whoop. Sometimes there is only a raw turnip and a piece of corn pone in his pocket for dinner. His feet and fingers are always numb with cold by the time he reaches the school house, but his eyes still shine, and his whistle never loses its note of cheeriness.
There are whippings and scoldings in the schoolhouse, just as there have always been whippings and scoldings in the cabin; for no sooner is he thawed out after his long walk, than he begins to be the worry of his teacher's life, as he was the torment of Mammy's. It is not that he means to make trouble. Despite his many blunders into mischief, he is always at the head of his class, for he has a motive for hard study that the other pupils know nothing of.
Every evening Bud and Ivy watch for his home-coming with eager faces flattened against the cabin window, lit up by the red glare of the sunset. They see him come running up the road, snapping his cold fingers, and turning occasional handsprings into the snow-drifts in the fence corners.