She went over to the spring and dipped the bucket into the keg. The dog that had been lying down 'n the path, his head lowered between his paws, now craw led up to the man and began to lick his feet.
The little boy looked down and shook his tiny fist at the dog.
“Ge-out, Nim!” he said.
The woman rose with the bucket of water.
“You don't have to carry him,” she said, “he can walk real well.”
“I would rather carry him,” replied the School-teacher.
And he followed the woman along the path, the dog at his heels.
They turned the shoulder of the ridge and came out on a flat bench of the mountain. Here stood a little cabin, built of logs and daubed with clay. It was roofed with rough clapboards. Before it was a porch roofed like the cabin. The door, swinging on wooden hinges, stood open. On the puncheon floor was a piece of handmade carpet—a circular mat, hand-plaited out of rags, a primitive cradle with wooden rockers, a bed covered with a pieced quilt, a rough stone fireplace, an iron pot with a lid and a black iron kettle. On the porch stood a split-basket full of beans in the hull, and beside the basket two chairs, the seats of plaited hickory bark. One of them was very small, a chair in miniature, made for the little boy. Near the path was an ax, a hacked log and some lighter limbs of trees, such as a woman might carry in from the forest. Beside the chimney was a primitive hopper made of clapboards, holding wood-ashes, and under this was a broken iron pot in which lye, obtained from the ashes by pouring water on it, dripped.
Beyond the cabin was a bit of garden and a little cornfield, where the ripened corn stood in yellow shocks bound with grapevines. The shocks were small, such as a woman could reach around. About, on the bench, were a grove of sugar trees, scarred with the marks of an auger, and among them, here and there, a great hickory. Beyond the grove one heard the faint tinkling of a bell where a cow moved in the forest.
The woman set the bucket of water on the porch and turned to take the child.