McChesney and the children. She never took me with her on these
journeys, but nearly always when she came back at nightfall her eyes
would be red, and I knew the two women had been weeping together. There
came a certain hot Sunday in July when she went on this errand, and
Grandpa Ripley having gone to spend the day at old man Winn's, I was left
alone. I remember I sat on the squared log of the door-step, wondering
whether, if I were to make my way to Salisbury, I could fall in with a
party going across the mountains into Kentucky. And wondering, likewise,
what Polly Ann would do without me. I was cleaning the long rifle,--a
labor I loved,--when suddenly I looked up, startled to see a man
standing in front of me. How he got there I know not. I stared at him.
He was a young man, very spare and very burned, with bright red hair and
blue eyes that had a kind of laughter in them, and yet were sober. His
buckskin hunting shirt was old and stained and frayed by the briers, and
his leggins and moccasins were wet from fording the stream. He leaned his
chin on the muzzle of his gun.

"Folks live here, sonny?" said he.

I nodded.

"Whar be they?"

"Out," said I.

"Comin' back?" he asked.

"To-night," said I, and began to rub the lock.

"Be they good folks?" said he.