“Kin ye read?” asked David Joslin quietly. “Kin ye write? Kin yore darter?”
She shook her head.
“I kin read jest a little bit,” said he himself slowly. “I kin write jest a little bit. Ye say ye’ve had no chancet. That’s true. What chancet have ary of us here? Whar can we learn anything? I’m a-goin’ Outside. I’m a-goin’ on a journey.”
“Set down an’ eat,” said she, with the unfailing hospitality of the mountains. “We hain’t got much. I kin parch ye some corn, maybe. Min’s down below trying to find some hickernuts an’ some corn. Folks don’t mind our foragin’ around. Why, even sometimes I’ve slept in a cabin now an’ then. They don’t mind if we sleep in the corn cribs sometimes when the weather’s cold. The husks is right warm—warmer’n leaves, I kin tell ye that.”
Joslin looked about him. A ragged gunny sack or so, a quilt or two, were heaped into one corner over a pile of leaves—there was no other sign of couch. In another corner of the cavern a blackened spot showed where they built their fire. With flint and steel the old woman now began her fire anew. There was a broken bit of iron, once a skillet. In this she managed to parch some grains of corn for the traveler.
“Eat, stranger,” said she. “Hit’s from Annie, the wanderin’ womern, that never had a chancet.”
He ate, and drank from a broken gourd of water which she gave to him. For a time he sat looking across the pageant of the hills, still radiant in their autumn finery.
At length he placed a hand in his pocket. “Take this,” said he. “I’ve got just thirty-five cents. I’ll keep the dime, fer I mought need it. I know the people in the mountings don’t take pay fer what they give to eat, but won’t ye please take this?”
“What do ye mean, man?” said she looking at him curiously, but refusing the money which he offered. “Ye seem like a quare feller to me. Air ye outen yore haid?”
“Maybe I got some good sense knocked into my haid, I don’t know. All I know is I’m a-goin’ Outside.”