At the end of two years Steve was graduated, having been thoroughly prepared upon entering college, and when he returned to his foster-parents at the close of school they were greatly pleased with their boy. On the second night after his arrival Mr. Polk sat with him after dinner and smoked in great satisfaction. But it was of short duration. Steve had had a letter from his alma mater, the Kentucky mountain school, asking him to return as a teacher there the next year, putting forth strongly the need and opportunity 122 for good. He had waited to talk the matter over with Mr. and Mrs. Polk before deciding, though it was pretty well settled in his own mind. He handed the letter to Mr. Polk.
“Of course you will not go,” said Mr. Polk, with decision, as soon as he had finished it. “There is an opening for you in the office and I am anxious for you to take hold at once.”
Steve looked afar again, as he had twice before when his fate was about to be settled for him, and Mr. Polk stirred impatiently. But the younger man turned at once, this time with that sudden smile upon his face, and said ingratiatingly:
“Mr. Polk, I am afraid I haven’t any head for business,––I love books far better. I feel a premonition that I shall be stupid in business.”
“Nonsense,” said Mr. Polk, with quick irritation. “I don’t believe it. You have never been stupid about anything.”
“I do not know,” Steve replied, serious again. “I have not been tried, I admit, and I must confess that business had a certain fascination for me as I have watched things stir in your office.”
“Of course, of course,” broke in Mr. Polk. “I have seen it in your face.”
“But–––” said Steve as promptly, and with a compelling earnestness in his voice that made the 123 older man hold himself in restraint. “Mr. Polk, I must tell you something before we go any further in this matter. My barren boyhood has never faded from my mind. I cannot put it from me. I live it again in the thought of every little child hidden away in the mountains in ignorance and squalor.
“There may be little ones of my own blood in the Hollow Hut home,” he added, and his voice dropped into a deep intensity which held them both motionless for a moment; then, for relief, breaking it again with that smile, he said: “I suppose it is the survival of our feudal mountain blood in me which makes me ready to go back to fight, bleed and die for my own.”
“It is simply a Quixotic idea you have gotten into your head that you should go back to the mountains and spend your life trying to help your people,” Mr. Polk replied emphatically.