She raised her shining face to his.
"It has just begun," she said.
MOLLY.
A small clearing on a hillside, sloping up from the little-traversed mountain-road to the forest, upon whose edge, in the midst of stunted oaks and scraggy pines stood a rude cabin, such as one comes upon here and there in the remote wilds of West Virginia. The sun, pausing just above the sharp summit of Pinnacle Mountain, threw slant rays across the rugged landscape, which spring was touching up with a thousand soft tints. A great swelling expanse of green, broken at intervals by frowning ledges, rolled off to the low-lying purple mountain ranges, whose summits still swam in sunset light, while their bases were lost in deepest shadow. Over all, a universal hush, the hush which thrills one with a sense of utter isolation and loneliness.
The man and woman who were seated before the cabin door hardly perceived these things. What their eyes saw, doubtless, was the fair promise of the corn-field which stretched along the road for some distance, the white cow with her spotted calf, and the litter of lively pigs which occupied inclosures near the cabin, and—the tiny baby, who lay, blinking and clutching at nothing, across the woman's lap. She was looking down upon the child with a smile upon her face. It was a young and handsome face, but there were shadows in the dark eyes and around the drooping lids, which the smile could not chase away—traces of intense suffering, strange to see in a face so young.
The man, a young and stalwart fellow, shaggy of hair and long of limb, had placed himself upon a log which lay beside the door-step, and was lost in contemplation of the small atom of embryo manhood upon which his deep-set blue eyes were fixed. He had been grappling for three weeks with the overpowering fact of this child's existence, and had hardly compassed it yet.
"Lord! Molly," he exclaimed, his face broadening into a smile, "jess look at him now! Look at them thar eyes! People says as babies don't know nuthin'. Durned ef thet thar young un don't look knowin'er 'n old Jedge Wessminster hisself. Why, I'm mos' afeared on him sometimes, the way he eyes me, ez cunnin' like, ez much ez ter say 'I'm hyar, dad, an' I'm agoin' ter stay, an' you's jess got ter knuckle right down tew it, dad!' Lord! look at thet thar now!" And the happy sire took one of the baby's small wrinkled paws and laid it across the horny palm of his own big left hand.
"Jess look, Molly! Now you ain't agoin' to tell me ez thet thar hand is ever agoin' to handle a ax or a gun, or—or—" pausing for a climax, "sling down a glass o' whiskey? 'Tain't possible!"