“It’s a great book, isn’t it?” And the conductor dropped into the seat a moment and took up the book fondly. “It’s helped me over a lot of rough places. Maybe it will be of use to you. Will you keep it?”
Tommy looked at him, astonished.
“Keep it?” he repeated. “Do you mean you’ll give it to me?”
The other looked out of the window to avoid catching his eye. Somehow he found it no longer possible to patronize this boy. He had grown, had broadened; it was not the same boy he had met before, but one who interested him vastly more.
“I want you to have it, you see,” he explained awkwardly. “You can’t get a copy at Wentworth, while I can easily get another at Washington. I’d like you to have something to remember me by. My name’s on the fly-leaf. Will you take it?”
He read the answer in the boy’s eyes, and fairly pushed the book into his hands.
“Put it in your pocket,” he said, and jumped up hastily. “Now I’ve got to go. There, don’t thank me. I know how you feel”; and he hastened away down the aisle.
Tommy tucked the inspiring volume into his pocket, and turned again to the window. He was not at all sleepy—the hours had passed so quickly that they had left no fatigue behind them. He saw that the train was entering the mountains. Away and away they stretched, one behind another, steaming with mist as the sun’s first rays touched them. Mile after mile the train sped onward. The light grew, the earth waked; men could be seen working in the scant fields, women standing at the cabin doors, children playing about their feet.
And then the train flashed into country familiar to Tommy. He looked out again upon New River, churning its way along over its rocky and uneven bed, the mountains springing straight up on either hand and almost crowding the train into the torrent. The sun had not yet penetrated here, and the heaps of slack and tottering coal-tipples along the road looked inexpressibly dreary.
More and more familiar grew the landscape. Away up on the mountain-side he discerned the black opening that marked the mouth of the mine where his father had worked. There was the little school-house. He could hear the engine-bell clanging wildly.