The morning went by quickly. At noon they had dinner by Indian Creek, that rushed and leaped. Three young Halls brought their food in baskets. It was spread under hemlocks, and they ate as it were in Arden. Dinner over, for half an hour they smoked and rested, stretched out beneath the trees.
"Tell us a story, Cooper!"
"I haven't one. Call Dave Hall over."
Dave came, tall and lank and brown as ale. "Sit under that tree, Dave, and tell us a story."
"I kin sing you about John Horn and Betsy at the dance."
"No. Tell us a story. Tell us about the mountain woman you began about the other day when the storm came up."
"Miss Ellice?"
"Yes, Miss Ellice."
Dave settled himself, with his back to the wine-red trunk of a hemlock. He was lean and tanned, wide-eyed, with a rich, drawling voice. "She was a see-er, that woman! This-a-time that I was telling about the mountain barked like a dawg at her, and showed its teeth and tried to bite—because she said an awful thing! She said that a time would come when every man and woman could do the things that Jesus did. She said Christ was an abstract description of the state of being folks would come to some day, and Jesus was a great laborer who got there earlier than 'most anybody else. Said he was an example, sure enough, and a shower of the way, and who could help loving and wondering? But, 'cording to her, the best way to love Jesus was to learn. Stop jest do-less wondering, and grow! Said that Bethlehem and Nazareth and Galilee and Jerusalem and the New Jerusalem were where any man or woman was! Brother Carraway preached against her, and the mountain decided she wasn't healthy for it. She was living all alone, but the mountain decided that her cabin had better be emptier yet. She was a tall woman, about the age of my mother, and when you looked at her you'd think at first she wasn't strong....
"Brother Carraway, after he had preached, went on home, but James Curdy always took what he found in the Word and tried to do it. What he found was usually right harsh. James had black eyes pushed 'way in, and long hair that always seemed to me to be blowing in a wind. He was awful fond of the word 'punish.' 'Now you're Punished!' 'God will Punish you!' He used to stride around and do his best to see that God didn't forget it. He was one to see that God did his duty, was James! He couldn't always make the mountain look at things same as he did, but after Brother Carraway's sermon, and the lightning striking Barber's house and killing old Mrs. Barber, he got two-thirds of it worked right up to his feelings! That was Tuesday after Sunday, the lightning having struck on Saturday, and Mrs. Barber buried on Monday. He got about thirty men and boys together at John Williams, and a lot of them had had whisky—I don't know that this air interestin'? I could sing to you about John Horn and Betsy."