“Go on, Davy.” She turned to the young man who stood, gray and silent, his hand upon the half-opened door. “Take him at his word, an’ don’t ye nuvver come back here agin. If ye hain’t happy in yore own home, git outen these mountings—git somewhars else. No matter what ye do, ye kain’t do worsen what ye’re doin’ here. Ye know that yore maw nuvver flickered afore him—nor yore granny neither—an’ don’t ye.”
The gray old man stood silent, at bay, in the center of the squalid little room—a room cluttered up with heavy, homemade chairs, a pair of corded bedsteads, a low board table; an interior lighted now in the approaching gloom of evening by nothing better than the log fire on the deep-worn hearth. It was an old, old room in an old, old house. The threshold of the door, renewed no man might say how often, was worn yet again to the bottom. Its hinges of wood were again worn half in two. The floor, made of puncheons once five inches thick, hewn by a hand-adze two generations ago from some giant poplar tree, now worn almost as smooth as glass by the polishing of bare feet—puncheons more than a yard wide each as they lay here on the ancient floor beams. A pair of windows, once owning glass, partially lighted the room, and there were two doors, one standing ajar at the farther end of the room making upon a covered passageway which led to a second cabin. In this usually went forward, it might be supposed, the cooking operations of the place, such as they were.
At length the old woman stepped to the side of the fireplace and kicked together the ends of the logs. A faint flame arose, now lighting up the interior of this half-savage abode. It showed all the better the tall form of the young man at the door. He spoke no more. With one last glance straight at the face of his father, he turned and passed out into the dusk.
The old man, suddenly trembling, now cast himself into a chair before the fire and sat staring into the flickering flames.
“Whar’s my supper?” he demanded hoarsely after a time.
“Thar hain’t none ready, an’ ye know it,” said his mother. “If I’d a-knowed ye war a-comin’ back I mought have got something ready. What made ye?”
“Hit war the Lord’s will,” he rejoined. “I’ve met causes sufficient. The Lord brung me back to find out what was a-goin’ on here, I reckon. The Sabbath, too!”
“Hit’s no worse one day than another,” said his mother. “Ye’ve druv yore own son outen yore own house. He’s got no house of his own to go to, to speak of—God knows thar’s little enough to keep him thar, that’s shore. Thar’s little enough to keep any of us here, come to that.”
Her attitude certainly was not that of shrinking or fear. Granny Joslin was known far and wide through these mountains as the fightingest of the fighting Joslins; and that was saying much.