contrast of the dark room, the crowding children, the slovenly dress, and the
coarse food was strangely disagreeable, along with the strange new shock came
the thrill that all this meant hills and home. It was about three o'clock of
the fourth day that, tramping up the Kentucky River, he came upon a long, even
stretch of smooth water, from the upper end of which two black boulders were
thrust out of the stream, and with a keener thrill he realized that he was
nearing home. He recalled seeing those rocks as the raft swept down the river,
and the old Squire had said that they were named after oxen--"Billy and Buck."
Opposite the rocks he met a mountaineer.

"How fer is it to Uncle Joel Turner's?"

"A leetle the rise o' six miles, I reckon."

The boy was faint with weariness, and those six miles seemed a dozen. Idea of
distance is vague among the mountaineers, and two hours of weary travel
followed, yet nothing that he recognized was in sight. Once a bend of the
river looked familiar, but when he neared it, the road turned steeply from the
river and over a high bluff, and the boy started up with a groan. He meant to
reach the summit before he stopped to rest, but in sheer pain, he dropped a
dozen paces from the top and lay with his tongue, like a dog's, between his
lips.

The top was warm, but a chill was rising from the fast-darkening shadows below
him. The rim of the sun was about to brush the green tip of a mountain across
the river, and the boy rose in a minute, dragged himself on to the point
where, rounding a big rock, he dropped again with a thumping heart and a
reeling brain. There it was--old Joel's cabin in the pretty valley below--old
Joel's cabin--home! Smoke was rising from the chimney, and that far away it
seemed that Chad could smell frying bacon. There was the old barn and he could