bind him out, and how, rather than have Jack mistreated and himself be
ill-used, he had run away along the mountain-top; how he had slept one night
under a log with Jack to keep him warm; how he had eaten sassafras and birch
back and had gotten drink from the green water-bulbs of the wild honeysuckle;
and how, on the second day, being hungry, and without powder for his gun, he
had started, when the sun sank, for the shadows of the valley at the mouth of
Kingdom Come. Before he was done, the old mother knocked the ashes from her
clay pipe and quietly went into the kitchen, and Jack, for all his good
manners, could not restrain a whine of eagerness when he heard the crackle of
bacon in a frying-pan and the delicious smell of it struck his quivering
nostrils. After dark, old Joel, the father of the house, came in--a giant in
size and a mighty hunter--and he slapped his big thighs and roared until the
rafters seemed to shake when Tall Tom told him about the dog-fight and the
boy-fight with the family in the next cove: for already the clanship was
forming that was to add the last horror to the coming great war and prolong
that horror for nearly half a century after its close.

By and by, the scarlet figure of little Melissa came shyly out of the dark
shadows behind and drew shyly closer and closer, until she was crouched in the
chimney corner with her face shaded from the fire by one hand and a tangle of
yellow hair, listening and watching him with her big, solemn eyes, quite
fearlessly. Already the house was full of children and dependents, but no word
passed between old Joel and the old mother, for no word was necessary. Two
waifs who had so suffered and who could so fight could have a home under that
roof if they pleased, forever. And Chad's sturdy little body lay deep in a
feather-bed, and the friendly shadows from a big fireplace flickered hardly
thrice over him before he was asleep. And Jack, for that night at least, was
allowed to curl up by the covered coals, or stretch out his tired feet, if he
pleased, to a warmth that in all the nights of his life, perhaps, he had never
known before.