The days following the end of the college year were inspiring ones for the humble folks of the village among the hills—Blood Camp. Slade Pemberton had duly harnessed his mules into the wagon, driven down to the little station and met the new collegian and her trunk.
But would she be changed much? was the question that was upon the lips of all Blood Camp. There were free expressions all around, that she would return from college “stuck up.” And what was still another ghost, that overshadowed every heart in the village, was the avowal of Fen Green and his friends that she would certainly return “proud.” But at length the homecoming was over, and the new college girl returned to the cabin upon the mountainside with Emeline Hobbs again acting as her housekeeper.
The first few days after her return the little cabin was overflowing with callers. Aged women; mothers with bawling babies upon their hips, old men and all, came to see and pay their respects to Gena Filson.
“Jist come up to see ye and take a good look at ye an’ say howdy,” was the unanimous greeting of all.
“Yes, she’s changed. Grow’d a lot. Prettier, too! an’ not a bit stuck up,” was the final verdict of all.
But there was one certain individual who had been a little slow in going to the cabin to visit its mistress since she had returned, and that one was Boaz Honeycutt. Since her return, Boaz Honeycutt had been quick to perceive the difference in the dress of Gena Filson and his own ragged clothes. The clothes of Gena Filson were better now, and alas! his own—rags they had always been—were growing worse with the passing years.
However, he had a few times ventured up to the cabin and had been each time cordially received. But each succeeding time that he went he was the more convinced that there was something—something that he could not explain—fixing a gulf between their friendship. It bruised and crushed his boy heart, lacerated it and left it bleeding and sore. The power of it bore down upon him with force, and left his face the picture of despair. The only other friend that he cherished next to Gena Filson was Paul Waffington. And now, at the thought of his name, his broken little heart went out over the high mountain’s fastnesses towards the far-away city and yearned for his comfort.
Lately he had taken his position upon the grave-yard hill to watch.
From his position on the grass plot he could command both a view of the store and of the road that led into the gorge, or “out into the big world som’ers,” as Emeline Hobbs had one day told him. Sometimes he would get up from his place on the grass plot, and as a diversion pass in at the little wicker gate and busied himself plucking the weeds from the mounds of two certain graves there. Then perchance, if shouts came up from the store a hundred yards away, that told of an extra good story that was being told there by one of “the boys,” he went down and heard it through only to return at length and resume his watch.