The Mountain School-Teacher

by Melville Davisson Post

CHAPTER XIII

EARLY on Monday morning an old man driving a gray mare in a two-wheeled cart came slowly up the road to the schoolhouse. A lank colt followed the mare. The cart was very old, no vestige of paint remained on it, one of the shafts was wrapped with wire, the bottom of the cart, made of small slats, was loose. The man was heavy and the cart creaked. He drove slowly, his big body filling the seat on which for comfort he had placed a folded bedquilt.

He stopped in the road below the schoolhouse and got slowly out of the creaking cart.

One of his legs was swollen with scrofula, and stiff to the knee. He moved it with difficulty. He left the mare standing in the road, the colt beside her, and came through the grove to the school-house door. The stiff leg gave his heavy body an awkward swing. He supported himself with a stout stick.

When he came finally to the school-house, he sat down on the step before the door. He had evidently moved faster than he was accustomed to do, and he remained for a moment breathing heavily, his big bulk covering the step. Then he got a memorandum hook and a pencil out of his pocket. The memorandum book was one of those cheap advertisements of patent medicine which are given away at the country store. It contained a few pages blank on one side and printed with virtues of the medicine on the other. The pencil was a little more pretentious than the ordinary one. It consisted of a tin case containing a long, thin core of purple lead, the end of which could be made to protrude for writing by pressing the thumb on the opposite end of the case.

The old man turned the leaves of the memorandum book, wetting his forefinger in his mouth, until he found a blank page. Then he laid the book on his knee, pressed the case of the pencil, touched the tip of the lead to his tongue, and laboriously wrote.

“This schoolhouse is closed, by order of P. Hamrick, Trustee.”

He tore the leaf out, rose and pinned it to the door.

It was some distance through the grove of ancient trees to the road, and he started to return. In spite of his bulk and his stiff leg he endeavored to hurry. He thrust his stout stick out before him on the path, and swung forward, his weight forcing the point of the stick into the earth. In order that he might not fall, and to find each time a safe place for the stick, he moved with his eyes on the ground.

Presently the end of the stick slipped on a pebble, and he lurched forward. He saved himself from falling by grasping the crook, of the stick with both hands, tottered a moment, then he regained his balance and looked up.