“Waal, sir!” exclaimed old man Cobbs, sitting on a stump and gently nursing his knee. He spoke with a voice of deep reprehension, and as simple an acceptance of the possibility of hailing from the place in question as if it were geographically extant.
Ormsby, who had been standing leaning on an axe, silently listening, laughed slightly at this,—an incredulous laugh. “Folks ez git ter that kentry don’t git back in a hurry,” he drawled negligently, but with a manifest satisfaction in the circumstance, as if he knew of sundry departed wights whom he esteemed well placed.
“How d’ye know they don’t?” demanded Peter Knowles. “Ain’t ye never read the Scriptures enough ter sense them lines, ‘Satan was a-walkin’ up and down through the yearth,’ ye blunderin’ buzzard, an’ he fell from heaven?”
The young fellow’s robust figure was clearly defined against the western sky. He swung his axe nonchalantly now, for to be an adept in reading and remembering the Scriptures was not the height of his ambition. Nevertheless, the idea of the possibility of being in the orbit, as it were, of an earthly stroll of the Prince of Darkness roused him to argument and insistence on a less terrifying solution of the mystery.
“He telled it ter me ez he kem from Happy Valley,” he volunteered.
The elders of the party stared at one another. The fire roared suddenly as a log broke, burned in twain; the limestone fragments, still crude, went rattling down into the crevices its fall had made. Peter Knowles’s arm, with the free ministerial gesticulation which he was wont to copy, fixed the absurdity upon Ormsby even before he spoke.
“Don’t ye know that thar Philistine ain’t got sech speech ez them ez lives in Happy Valley, nor thar clothes, nor thar raisin’, nor thar manners, nor thar ways, nor thar—nuthin’? Don’t you-uns sense that?”
“I ’lowed ez much ter him,” replied Ormsby, a trifle browbeaten by the seniority of his interlocutor and the difficulty of the subject. “I up-ed an’ said, ‘Ye ain’t nowise like folks ez live in Happy Valley. Ter look at ye, I’d set it down fur true ez ye hed never been in the shadder o’ Chilhowee all yer days.’”
“An’ what did he say, bub?” demanded old man Cobbs gently, after a moment of waiting.
“Great Gosh, yes!” exclaimed Peter Knowles explosively. “We-uns ain’t a-waitin’ hyar ter hear you-uns tell yer talk; ennybody could hev said that an’ mo’. What did the man say?”