Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

The Heart of the Hills by John Fox
page 58 of 342 (16%)
their isolation had left them in a long sleep that had given them
a long rest, but had done them no real harm. Always in their eyes,
however, she was a woman, and no woman was "fitten" to teach
school. She was more--a "fotched-on" woman, a distrusted
"furriner," and she was carrying on a "slavery school." Sometimes
she despaired of ever winning their unreserved confidence, but out
of the very depth of that despair to which the firebrand of some
miscreant had plunged her, rose her star of hope, for then the
Indian-like stoicism of her neighbors melted and she learned the
place in their hearts that was really hers. Other neighborhoods
asked for her to come to them, but her own would not let her go.
Straightway there was nothing to eat, smoke, chew, nor wear that
grew or was made in those hills that did not pour toward her. Land
was given her, even money was contributed for rebuilding, and when
money was not possible, this man and that gave his axe, his horse,
his wagon, and his services as a laborer for thirty and sixty
days. So that those axes gleaming in the sun on the hillside,
those straining muscles, and those sweating brows meant a labor of
love going on for her. No wonder the peace of her eyes was deep.

And yet St. Hilda, as one forsaken lover in the Blue-grass had
christened her, opened the little roll-book in her lap and sighed
deeply, for in there on her waiting-list were the names of a
hundred children for whom, with all the rebuilding, she would have
no place. Only the day before, a mountaineer had brought in nine
boys and girls, his stepdaughter's and his own, and she had sadly
turned them away. Still they were coming in name and in person, on
horseback, in wagon and afoot, and among them was Jason Hawn, who
was starting toward her that morning from far away over the hills.

DigitalOcean Referral Badge