“Somebody told me there was a cave up there along the ridge,” he said to Ballard, as the boy came shuffling back into the mill room.
“Yep. There is. Regular good one!” he answered. “Lot of these white icicles in it. Look like icicles but not really icicles you know.”
“Stalactites and stalagmites,” Johnny suggested.
“That what you call ’em?” Ballard stared. “Looks like there might be an easier name to say. But they’re there anyway. Want to go up there? Don’t have to go back right away do you? I’ll be through in less than an hour. Then we’ll go up.”
“We—ll,” Johnny reflected for a moment. “Just so I get back by early candle light. I guess it will be all right.” Just at that moment had there been any mountain imps about, and if there were such creatures as imps, we might imagine one whispering to Johnny: “As if you’d ever get back by early candle light!” But there are no imps, so there was no whisper.
As Johnny stood there a feeling of uneasiness, not to say of guilt, crept over him. At first he was at a loss to know what it was all about. Then, like a sudden bang from a squirrel hunter’s gun, it came to him.
“Ran away!” he exclaimed in an undertone. “Ran away. That’s what I did.”
Yes, that was just what he had done. The call of the Cumberlands had been too much for him. The whisper of breezes among the hilltops, the chatter of squirrels in the chestnut trees, the gleam of water in deep pools where sly old black bass lurk, had been too strong for him. He had run away.
Run away from what? The strangest thing! Not from his home. Johnny had no home except the home of his grandfather at old Hillcrest. There he was free to come and go as he chose. He had not run away from his job either, at present he had no job. He had run away from a promise.
In Hillcrest, the little home city of his grandfather, there was a college, not a large college, but a very fine one. The students were a sturdy hard-working lot, the professors wise and friendly.