NELSON LLOYD

Illustrated by A. B. Frost

[Frontispiece:  They called to me as a boy.]

Charles Scribner’s Sons
New York ------------ 1904
Copyright, 1904, by
Charles Scribner’s Sons
Published, September, 1904

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

They called to me as a boy . . . . . . Frontispiece

   “Welcome home—­thrice welcome!”

   Tim and I had stopped our ploughs to draw lots and
     he had lost

   “Well, old chap!”

   Josiah Nummler

   He did not stop to hear my answer

   Swearing terrible oaths that he will never return

   No answer came from the floor above

   The tiger story

   He had a last look at Black Log

   “He pumped me dry”

   “Nanny is likely to get one of her religious spells
     and quit work”

   I was back in my prison

   “‘At my sover-sover-yne’s will’”

   Perry Thomas stands confronting the English warrior

   “You’ll begin to think you ain’t there at all”

   I saw a girl on the store porch

   Aaron Kallaberger

   Leander

   “Her name was Pinky Binn, a dotter of the house of Binn,
     the Binns of Turkey Walley”

   William had felt the hand of “Doogulus”

   “Aren’t you coming?” young Colonel seemed to say

   Sat little Colonel, wailing

   The main thing was proper nursing

   Well, ain’t he tasty

   “But there are no ghosts,” I argued

   “Of course it hurts me a bit here”

   “An seein’ a light in the room, I looked in”

   Tip Pulsifer leaned on my gate

   The horse went down

   “And I’m his widder”

   Then Tim came

   Old Captain

   When we three sit by the fire

THE SOLDIER OF THE VALLEY

I

I was a soldier.  I was a hero.  You notice my tenses are past.  I am a simple school-teacher now, a prisoner in Black Log.  There are no bars to my keep, only the wall of mountains that make the valley; and look at them on a clear day, when sunshine and shadow play over their green slopes, when the clouds all white and gold swing lazily in the blue above them, and they speak of freedom and of life immeasurable.  There are no chains to my prison, no steel cuffs to gall the limbs, no guards to threaten and cow me.  Yet here I stay year after year.  Here I was born and here I shall die.