Tip Pulsifer leaned on my gate

The horse went down

"And I'm his widder"

Then Tim came

Old Captain

When we three sit by the fire




THE SOLDIER OF THE VALLEY


I

I was a soldier. I was a hero. You notice my tenses are past. I am a
simple school-teacher now, a prisoner in Black Log. There are no bars
to my keep, only the wall of mountains that make the valley; and look
at them on a clear day, when sunshine and shadow play over their green
slopes, when the clouds all white and gold swing lazily in the blue
above them, and they speak of freedom and of life immeasurable. There
are no chains to my prison, no steel cuffs to gall the limbs, no guards
to threaten and cow me. Yet here I stay year after year. Here I was
born and here I shall die.