VIII
A PILGRIM FROM DUBUQUE
It is a long road from anywhere to Mullein Hill, and only the rural postman and myself travel it at all frequently. The postman goes by, if he can, every weekday, somewhere between dawn and dark, the absolute uncertainty of his passing quite relieving the road of its wooded loneliness. I go back and forth somewhat regularly; now and then a neighbor takes this route to the village, and at rarer intervals an automobile speeds over the "roller coaster road"; but seldom does a stranger on foot appear so far from the beaten track. One who walks to Mullein Hill deserves and receives a welcome.
I may be carting gravel when he comes, as I was the day the Pilgrim from Dubuque arrived. Swinging the horses into the yard with their staggering load, I noticed him laboring up the Hill by the road in front. He stopped in the climb for a breathing spell,—a tall, erect old man in black, with soft, high-crowned hat, and about him something, even at the distance, that was—I don't know—unusual—old-fashioned—Presbyterian.
Dropping the lines, I went down to greet the stranger, though I saw he carried a big blue book under his arm. To my knowledge no book-agent had ever been seen on the Hill. But had I never seen one anywhere I should have known this man had not come to sell me a book. "More likely," I thought, "he has come to give me a book. We shall see." Yet I could not quite make him out, for while he was surely professional, he was not exactly clerical, in spite of a certain Scotch-Covenanter-something in his appearance. He had never preached at men, I knew, as instinctively as I knew he had never persuaded them with books or stocks or corner-lots in Lhassa. He had a fine, kindly face, that was singularly clear and simple, in which blent the shadows and sorrows of years with the serene and mellow light of good thoughts.
"Is this Mullein Hill?" he began, shifting the big blue copy of the "Edinburgh Review" from under his arm.
"You're on Mullein Hill," I replied, "and welcome."
"Is—are—you Dallas Lore—"
"Sharp?" I said, finishing for him. "Yes, sir, this is Dallas Lore Sharp, but these are not his over-alls—not yet; for they have never been washed and are about three sizes too large for him."