"Thanks, Mr. Cornwall, for helping me. At least tomorrow I will have the best of those big boys. It is surprising how easy the seemingly hard things are after you have learned to do them."
Shortly after sunrise the following morning, Mr. Rogers and Cornwall said good-bye to their host and his family and rode off down the creek.
They had gone but a short distance when they overtook Mary and Susie on their way to school. They rode slowly keeping pace with the walking girls.
"Mr. Cornwall and I feel we should make our excuses for the additional labor our visit has caused you."
"We are glad you stopped over at our home. The life is lonely at times and the face and talk of a stranger break the monotony. Besides Mr. Cornwall helped me with my studies. I hope when you pass this way you will find time to stop again."
"I doubt if I shall come, but Mr. Cornwall, who is to be our local attorney at Harlan, must return in a week or so to supervise the Brock and Helton surveys and will be making occasional trips to Pineville. After he becomes a better horseman you may see him occasionally riding on his own saddle horse, comfortably seated on a hard saddle and carrying his clothing and papers in a pair of saddle bags. Now he finds the trip tiresome, later he will find the ride exhilarating and your house a convenient resting place; am I right Cornwall?"
"I desire to express my thanks and shall be glad of any opportunity to stop and see you again."
"Here we are at the Salt Trace road; you follow it over the mountain to the river, then up the river valley to Poor Fork which you cross almost within sight of the town. Goodbye to both and good luck to Judge Cornwall; come again."
Their road after crossing the mountains was up the Cumberland Valley, hemmed in on the north by the gracefully sloping spurs of Pine Mountain and flanked on the south by the more rugged and closely encroaching Cumberland mountains.
The river gurgles and murmurs and surges along over a bottom of boulders or lies restfully placid over a bottom of sand. In these pool-like reaches many large rocks, shaken from the mountain tops in ages past, lift their gray heads high above the water and give to the scene a touch of rugged grandeur.