brought to Aunt Cornelia and Pap John. When Jeff married his fourth
wife--Zulena Spivey, a powerful, vital, affluent creature, of an unusual
type for the mountains,--and the children (there were nine of them by this
time) went to live with their step-mother, whose physique and disposition
promised a longer tenure than any of her predecessors, Pap and Aunt
Cornelia sat upon the lonely hearth and assured each other with tears that
never again would they take into their home and their lives, as their very
own, any children upon whom they could have no sure claim.

"Tell ye, Cornely, this thing o' windin' yer heart-strings around and
around a passel o' chaps for a year or so and then havin' 'em tore
out--well, hit takes a mighty considerable chunk o' yer heart along with
'em." And the wife, looking at him with wet eyes, nodded an assent.

It was next May that Pap Overholt, who had been doing some hauling over as
far as Big Turkey Track, returned one evening with a little figure perched
beside him on the high wagon seat. "The Lord sent him, honey," he said, and
handed the child down to his wife. "He ain't got a livin' soul on this
earth to lay claim to him. He is ourn as much as ef he was flesh and bone
of us. I even tuck out the papers."

That evening, the two sitting watching the little dark face in its sleep,
Pap told his story. Driving across the flank of Yellow Old Bald, beyond
Lost Cabin, he had passed a woman with five children sitting beside the
road in Big Buck Gap.

"Cornely, she looked like a picture out of a book," whispered Pap. "This
chap's the livin' image of her. Portugee blood--touch o' that melungeon
tribe from over in the Fur Cove. She had a little smooth face shaped like a
aig; that curly hair hangin' clean to her waist, dark like this baby's, but